(ii) _The Miocene Period._ Beds of Miocene age are wanting in Britain, and on the Continent they occur in isolated basins deposited in gulf-like prolongations of the ocean, never very far from land. A description of the strata and their fossil contents would be of little use for our present purposes, and the remarks made concerning the Oligocene beds will apply to the Miocene strata also. The period was mainly remarkable on account of the important physical changes which occurred, to which we must devote some consideration. Commencing with the British area, we find in the south evidence of the separation of the London and Hampshire Basins at this time, for the Oligocene beds of Hampshire are tilted up on the south side of an anticline, which separates the Hampshire Basin from that of London, indicating that the movement was post-Miocene, while in Kent, beds of Pliocene age rest on the denuded top of the chalk, showing that the elevation and denudation which accompanied it were pre-Pliocene; the great Wealden anticline is thus seen to be of Miocene age. On the north side of the London Basin the line of demarcation between Eocene and Mesozoic beds runs approximately parallel to the strike of the latter in that part of Britain, and this points to the elevation of the Mesozoic strata which gave them their present south-easterly dip about the same period, though in the absence of Oligocene rocks it cannot be definitely stated that the movement was altogether post-Oligocene. The present physical geography of considerable parts of Britain must date from Miocene times.