A large and splendid species of fossil Nautilus is not uncommon in the London Clay of the Isle of Sheppey, Sussex, and Hampshire. The chambers are often lined with spar or other brilliant mineral matter; and polished sections, like those of the Ammonites, admirably display the internal structure.[AE] [AE] See Dr. Buckland's '_Bridgewater Treatise_' for numerous figures of Ammonites and Nautili; _plates_ 31 to 34. Consult also '_Medals of Creation_,' vol. ii. p. 457. Note V. Page 27. _Brighton Cliffs._ [Sidenote: BRIGHTON CLIFFS.] The stranger who approaches Brighton by the railroads through deep tunnels and cuttings in the chalk, and perceives the town spread over the plain and on the sides of a valley of the South Downs, will naturally expect to find the sea-shore bounded by chalk-cliffs. But a wall of admirable construction, extends from the Steyne to beyond Kemptown, and effectually conceals from view the materials that compose the site of that part of Brighton; a ramble along the shore to Rottingdean is therefore necessary to reveal to the inquiring observer, the nature of the strata that flank the southern border of the Downs. The sketch given in page 27, represents the appearance of part of the coast to the east of Kemptown. The base of the cliff to the height of a few feet, is seen to consist of the white chalk with its usual layers of flint nodules, forming a low wall or terrace, which slopes seaward, and extends far into the British channel--probably to the opposite coast of France: at low-water a considerable expanse of modern shingle and sand is spread over, and in a great measure conceals, the chalk, at a few yards distance from the cliff. Upon the terrace of chalk, at the height of from ten to fifteen feet above the modern beach, there is a bed of pebbles and sand, containing also a considerable number of boulders of granite, porphyry, and other crystalline rocks foreign to the south-east of England: in fact, a sea-beach, which must have been formed at some remote period, in the same manner as the modern shingle. Upon this ancient beach are strata of loam, and chalk-rubble, with flints partially water-worn, and boulders of sandstone, breccia, granite, &c., constituting the upper sixty or eighty feet of the cliff. In these beds, and also in the ancient shingle, many teeth and bones of mammoths (extinct species of elephant), horse, deer, oxen, and other ruminants, and bones of whales, have been discovered.[AF] [AF] See '_Medals of Creation_,' p. 914. [Sidenote: THE SUSSEX COAST.] A few hundred yards beyond Kemptown the inroads of the sea have destroyed all vestiges of the strata above described, and the cliffs consist of a perpendicular wall of chalk; if we extend our walk to Rottingdean, we shall perceive here and there isolated patches of the ancient shingle, and of the calcareous strata containing elephants' bones.