h the Medway
flows in the north, and which forms a fertile soil, well cultivated,
and particularly rich in hops and wheat. The primitive forests have
been largely cleared, the primitive marshes have all been drained, and
now the Weald Clay district is fairly well peopled and sprinkled with
villages. From the middle of this plain the core of Lower Cretaceous
sandstones known as the Hastings Beds emerges steeply, and reaches in
the centre an elevation of 796 ft. at Crowborough Beacon. It is on the
whole a region with few streams, and a considerable portion of the
ancient woodland still remains in Ashdown Forest. The greater part of
the Forest Ridges is almost without inhabitants. Towns are found only
round the edge bordering the Weald Clay, such as Tonbridge, Tunbridge
Wells and Horsham; and along the line where it is cut off by the sea,
e.g. Hastings and St Leonards. The broad low tongue of Romney Marsh
running out to Dungeness is a product of shore-building by the Channel
tides, attached to the Wealden area, but not essentially part of it.

_The London Basin._--The London Basin occupies a triangular depression
in the Chalk which is filled up with clays and gravels of Tertiary and
later age. It extends from the eastern extremity of Wiltshire in a
widening triangle to the sea, which it meets along an irregular line
from Deal to Cromer. It thus occupies parts of Wiltshire, Hampshire,
Surrey, Kent, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, the whole of Middlesex, the
county of London and Essex, and the eastern edge of Suffolk and
Norfolk. The scenery is quiet in its character, but the gravel hills
are often prominent features, as at Harrow and in the northern suburbs
of London; the country is now mainly under grass or occupied with
market and nursery gardens, and many parts, of which Epping Forest is
a fine example, are still densely wooded, the oak being the prevailing
tree. The coast is everywhere low and deeply indented by ragged and
shallow estuaries, that of the Thames being the largest. Shallow
lagoons formed along the lower courses of the rivers of Norfolk have
given to that part of the country the name of the Broads, a district
of low and nearly level land. Apart from the huge area of urban and
suburban London, the London Basin has few large towns. Norwich and
Ipswich, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Harwich and Colchester may be mentioned
in the north-eastern part, all depe