lls of
the Oolite, I am inclined to deem the deposit one of estuary origin. Its
clays were probably thrown down, like the silts of so many of our
rivers, in some shallow bay, where the waters of a descending stream
mingled with those of the sea, and where, though shells nearly akin to
our existing periwinkles and whelks congregate thickly, the Belemnite,
seared by the brackish water, never plied its semi-cartilaginous fins,
or the Nautilus or Ammonite hoisted its membranaceous sail.

We pass on towards the north. A thick bed of an extremely soft white
sandstone presents here, for nearly half a mile together, its front to
the waves, and exhibits, under the incessant wear of the surf, many
singularly grotesque combinations of form. The low precipices,
undermined at the base, beetle over like the sides of stranded vessels.
One of the projecting promontories we find hollowed through and through
by a tall rugged archway; while the outer pier of the arch,--if pier we
may term it,--worn to a skeleton, and jutting outwards with a knee-like
angle, presents the appearance of a thin ungainly leg and splay foot,
advanced, as if in awkward courtesy, to the breakers. But in a winter
or two, judging from its present degree of attenuation, and the yielding
nature of its material, which resembles a damaged mass of arrow-root,
consolidated by lying in the leaky hold of a vessel, its persevering
courtesies will be over, and pier and archway must lie in shapeless
fragments on the beach. Wherever the surf has broken into the upper
surface of this sandstone bed, and worn it down to nearly the level of
the shore, what seem a number of double ramparts, fronting each other,
and separated by deep square ditches exactly parallel in the sides,
traverse the irregular level in every direction. The ditches vary in
width from one to twelve feet; and the ramparts, rising from three to
six feet over them, are perpendicular as the walls of houses, where they
front each other, and descend on the opposite sides in irregular slopes.
The iron block, with square groove and projecting ears, that receives
the bar of a railway, and connects it with the stone below, represents
not inadequately a section of one of these ditches, with its ramparts.
They form here the sole remains of dykes of an earthy trap, which,
though at one time in a state of such high fusion that they converted
the portions of soft sandstone in immediate contact with them into the
consistence