Silt Silt can be visually observed with a hand lens, exhibiting a sparkly appearance. It also can be felt by the tongue as granular when placed on the front teeth (even when mixed with clay particles). Silt is created by a variety of physical processes capable of splitting the generally sand-sized quartz crystals of primary rocks by exploiting deficiencies in their lattice. These involve chemical weathering of rock and regolith, and a number of physical weathering processes such as frost shattering and haloclasty. The main process is abrasion through transport, including fluvial comminution, aeolian attrition and glacial grinding. It is in
Fern House Gravel Pit no public access. Fern House Gravel Pit Fern House Gravel Pit is a 1.3 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Fern, near Bourne End in Buckinghamshire. It is also a Geological Conservation Review site. This site exposes the Pleistocene Taplow Gravel formation, and may help to elucidate a poorly understood period in the history of the River Thames, between glacial Anglian stage, around 450,000 years ago, when the river was diverted south to its present course, and the warm Ipswichian around 120,000 years ago. Fossils found at the site include straight-tusked elephants and mammoths. The site is on