Publications
On the Newer Tertiary Deposits of the Sussex Coast, by R. Godwin-Austen, published January 1856 in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. 12, issue 1-2, article, pp.4-6) View Online
Abstract:From Brighton, westwards, between the chalk-hills and the sea, the surface of the country is formed, first, by a raised terrace of "red gravels," lying on the sloping base of the chalk-hills, and on the old tertiary deposits; secondly, the gravels of the Chichester levels, or the "white gravels." These latter are distinctly bedded and seamed with sand, and are more water-worn than the red gravels which pass under them; thirdly, the white gravels are overlaid by "brick-earth," which is somewhat variable in its characters. These, with their equivalents, are the Glacial deposits of the district in question.
On the newer Tertiary deposits of the Sussex coast, by R. Godwin-Austen, published January 1857 in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. 13, no. 1-2, article, pp.40-72) View Online
Abstract:It was only a very short time since, and that, too, in the most advanced treatises on systematic geology, that certain superficial accumulations of every European district were grouped together, as belonging to "the diluvial period." Recent investigations are now beginning to assure us of the great amount of physical change which is referable to that period, and also that it was not transitory, nor convulsive, as it has been frequently represented. Already it is separable into stages and subdivisions, whereby the lapse of time is becoming clearly marked out.
The knowledge we possess of the history of these later changes is as yet a very imperfect one, and it is not perhaps too much to assert, that, of all geological periods, that which comes nearest to our own times is the one which is the least understood. If the accumulations themselves in these regions are wanting in those vertical dimensions which speak directly to the eye as to the vast duration of the older palæozoic, secondary, and tertiary periods, the very fact of great physical changes having taken place during comparatively much shorter periods of time is in itself a consideration which renders the earth's recent history even more strange than its remoter one.
The knowledge we possess of the history of these later changes is as yet a very imperfect one, and it is not perhaps too much to assert, that, of all geological periods, that which comes nearest to our own times is the one which is the least understood. If the accumulations themselves in these regions are wanting in those vertical dimensions which speak directly to the eye as to the vast duration of the older palæozoic, secondary, and tertiary periods, the very fact of great physical changes having taken place during comparatively much shorter periods of time is in itself a consideration which renders the earth's recent history even more strange than its remoter one.