To most Sandown Bay is by far the most accessible place in the Island to study the earlier strata; and for our first geological studies it has the advantage of showing a succession of strata so tilted that we can pass over one formation after another in the course of a short walk. But when we have learnt the nature of geological research, and how to read the record of the rocks, and examined the Wealden and Greensand strata in Sandown Bay, we shall do well, if possible, to make expeditions to Brook and Atherfield, to see the splendid succession of Wealden and Greensand strata shown in the cliffs of the south-west of the Island. It is a lonely stretch of coast, wild and storm-swept in winter. But this part of the Island is full of interest and charm to the lover of Nature and of the old-world villages and the old churches and manor houses which fit so well into their natural surroundings. The villages in general lie back under the shelter of the downs some distance from the shore; a coastguard station, a lonely farm house, or some fishermen's houses as at Brook, forming the only habitations of man we come to along many miles of shore. Brook Point is a spot of great interest to the geologist. Here we come upon Wealden strata somewhat older than any in Sandown Bay. The shore at the Point at low tide is seen to be strewn with the trunks of fossil trees. They are of good size, some 20 ft. in length, and from one to three feet in diameter. They are known as the Pine Raft, and evidently form a mass of timber floated down an ancient river, and stranded near the mouth, just as happens with great accumulations of timber which float down the Mississippi at the present day. The greater part of the wood has been replaced by stone, the bark remaining as a carbonaceous substance like coal, which, however, is quickly destroyed when exposed to the action of the waves. The fossil trees are mostly covered with seaweed. On the trunks may sometimes be found black shining scales of a fossil fish, _Lepidotus Mantelli_. (A stratum full of the scales of _Lepidotus_ has been recently exposed in the Wealden of Sandown Bay.) The strata with the Pine Raft form the lowest visible part of the anticline. From Brook Point the Wealden strata dip in each direction, east and west. As the coast does not cut nearly so straight across the strata as in Sandown Bay, we see a much longer section of the beds. On either side of the Point are coloured marls, followed by blue shales, as at Sandown. To the westward, however, after the shales we suddenly come to variegated marls again, followed by a second set of shales. There was long a question whether this repetition is due to a fault, or whether local conditions have caused a variation in the type of the beds. The conclusion of the Geological Survey Memoir, 1889, rather favoured the latter view, on the ground of the great change which has taken place in the character of the beds in so short a distance, assuming them to