ABSTRACT
At the western end of the Isle of Wight, a long ridge of chalk-down, which stretches completely across the island, runs out to sea, and terminates in the well-known white pinnacles of the Needles. From the highest part of the ridge, when the air is clear, the eye ranges southward over a vast expanse of open sea. To the west and north the breadth of water is bounded by the blue hills of Dorset shire, the white cliffs of Swanage Bay and then the long low brown heights which are crowned with the spires of Bournemouth and Christ church. A feature so conspicuous in the architecture of the precipices could not escape the attention of the most casual visitor; but he only vaguely marvels at it, until geology tells him that the dark lines mark successive floors of that ancient sea-floors that gathered one over another, as generation after generation of marine creatures left their crumbling remains upon the bottom.
