The old sandstone cliffs on the one hand, the eversounding sea on the other;-who that knows Folkestone does not know the Lower Road? Judging by the numbers that frequent it we should say there are few rambles in the neighbourhood to be compared with it; be it summer or winter, it is never deserted. What shall be our musings as we wander along the pebbly beach, or stroll up the romantic path cut on the face of the cliff through the miniature groves of Scotch Fir? Perhaps it will be wiser, certainly more successful, to give our thoughts the rein, and let them carry us whither they will, for at every fresh step we shall gain fresh reminders, and old associations will rush back again on the mind. These old grey cliffs, what tales they could tell of the days that are gone! What stirring scenes have once and again been witnessed from their summit! Time was, when the road at their foot was a rocky sea shore, over which the waves dashed unceasingly in the days when mankind were no less tumultuous than themselves: possibly, nay some will have it, B very probably, the woad-stained Briton, and the hoary Druid watched from thence the proud fleet of the Romans nearing the shore; and since then Saxon and Dane, and Frenchman have in their turn paid hostile visits and left unwelcome tokens behind. On that platform, in the days when it stretched much further seaward than now, was erected the first Religious House in Britain, presided over by no less a person than Eanswythe, daughter of Eadbald, King of Kent, but ages ago it was washed away by the hungry waves; and the original parish church shared the same fate. Vessels, equipped and manned by our forefathers, started again and again from below in obedience to the summons of the Warden of the Cinque Ports, even up to the time of the Armada, and after; then gradually the warlike tendencies died out, and not a hundred years ago the whole locality was a great smuggling depôt. They smuggled English guineas across to France, and they smuggled tobacco, silks, and spirits back to England, and that so daringly that the cargoes were openly displayed on the beach. Clefts and caves abound in the chalk cliffs which were excavated for hiding places, and the curiously built old houses in the ancient part of the town, the intricate passages, and the trap doors, which rouse the curiosity of the visitors, are thus easily accounted for. But now quieter times are come, the fishing smack and the collier, with an occasional cargo of timber are all that find ingress and egress at the port, and there is leisure for grander things. To the Naturalist, who has learnt to Look on Nature as a volume this Lower Road must needs be a favourite resort, whatever his tastes, there are treasures here worth the seeking, and mysteries which a lifetime would fail to unravel. To the Geologist it is interesting as the commencement of that escarpment of Greensand which runs round the great Weald district to meet the sea again at Beachy Head. The strata appear to dip five or six degrees to the east, but the true dip is probably N.E.; we may follow these lines past the Harbour until they enter the bed of the sea. No profusion of organic remains is to be detected in them; many of the blocks contain coarse grains of quartz and glauconite, showing that the waters of the old sea were far from tranquil, an opinion borne out by the many evidences of false bedding and cross-stratification presented in the face of the cliff, and wherever a quarry is opened. The rocks belong to the subdivision known as the Folkestone Beds; a short distance past the Bathing Establishment the Sandgate Beds crop out—a dark mixture of clay and sand, in which we may occasionally find fossil wood much bored and tunnelled by worms. A little more interest attaches to a limited deposit of Pleistocene age crowning the cliff at the back of the Pavilion Hotel, just below the Battery. In this, some years ago, were found bones of the extinct Mammoth, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Irish Elk, Reindeer, &c., bringing before the mind's eye another picture of the past, older and stranger than any of the historical pictures already noted. It is a freshwater deposit, as shown by some shells found in it by Mr. McKenny Hughes, during a hurried visit. But where is the river that laid it down? Was it the stream which cut out the Folkestone valley, the representative of which now ignobly creeps along under the Viaduct, and then, hastening out of sight through the mill and along the back of Tontine Street, buries itself in the Harbour? Can that be the impoverished descendant of a river on whose banks the huge Mammoth found food, in whose rushy bed the Hippopotamus bathed? Who knows? And when was it all done? Can we tell the ages? * Certainly at that time, whenever it was, the extinct elephant was no scarce beast in the locality; its bones cannot be said to be uncommon, they are now and then turned up out of the clay in the brickfields. Part of a fine shoulder blade, now in the Museum, was disinterred in 1876 near the Cheriton Arch, close by the spot where, a few months before, some teeth and bones of the Rhinoceros were found. I have also a box full of bones belonging to a skeleton of a very small Mammoth found on Park Farm in 1868. A very slight exercise of the imagination suffices to picture out the stores of vegetation which must have covered all this district, as necessary to support these huge mammals. Like their modern representatives in Africa, they would require a luxuriant herbage, and we may fairly compare this district with their present dwelling place. But they * I am constantly asked by those whose curiosity exceeds their taste for geology how many years ago it is since these creatures lived. But the geologist reckons not by years, cannot so reckon, however much he may wish it. His chronology is relative, not absolute, for he has no certain data on which to base his calculations. themselves are all gone, they are a vanished race. "The old order changeth, giving place to the new." They probably disappeared before the advances of the half naked but more sagacious Celt, or even his predecessors, who with their flint-tipped arrows forced on their destruction. Now they are gone too, and we have the nineteenth century with railroads and telegraphs, electric lights and microphones. Tempora mutantur. And now, what of the botany of the Lower Road? It is truly a storehouse of treasures. From the time when the banks are yellow with Furze blossoms in January to the appearance of the orange berries on the Sea Buckthorn the slopes are a blaze of colour. And chiefly it it is golden. The Furze blossoms have not disappeared before the Kingcups or Buttercups (whichever name you prefer) spread themselves luxuriantly in all directions. Not one or two species only, for Ranunculus acris is there, though sparingly; R. bulbosus as usual, is without limit, and R. repens rears its head crowned with a corolla an inch and a quarter across, two feet and more above its lowlier neighbours. Then in June, mixing with the dying blossoms of the Ranunculaceae comes the glorious hue of the Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and a host of its relatives. In no one spot have I ever seen gathered together so many representatives of the Leguminosa, and among them such good things. I give at the end of this ramble a list of the species found on this road. The botanist will notice particularly Lathyrus Nissolia, and L. pratensis, Vicia bithynica, Trifolium suffocatum, and T. arvense, He will, I know, want to start at once for Lathyrus |