Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/310

202 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Jan. 12, Lower down these valleys, at Leamington, when excavations were being made in the Jephson Gardens, bones of Elephant and Rhinoceros were found.

It remains now only to speak of the alluvial soil in these valleys and its contents. It does not appear to be anywhere very thick ; perhaps 7 or 8 feet is the outside ; and it therefore merely fills up slight depressions in the valleys previously existing. The present streams go on adding to the alluvial soil by the frequent floods, and must be considered adequate to have produced the whole of it.

The discovery of bones in this alluvium a few years ago caused considerable interest. This discovery was due to the industry and acuteness of Mr. E. Cleminshaw, then a pupil in the School. He made the discovery entirely his own by finding several places where such bones are to be met with. The most interesting of these are in the bed and banks of the stream near Newton, in the Avon a little below Newbold, and close by the little bridge below the Little-Lawford Mill. These bones have not been specifically determined ; and I cannot pronounce on them. A large collection of them is in the Arnold Library at Rugby. Three or four flints were found with them, which have been pronounced by fairly competent judges to be probably flint weapons. But I found in one of these localities, associated with the same bones, a piece of a wine-bottle, some pottery, not ancient, and the bowl of a tobacco-pipe ; I am therefore sceptical.

This concludes this short notice on the superficial deposits near Rugby ; and I am not without hope it may be found useful to those who are engaged upon the problem of determining the history of the processes which the surface of the midland counties has undergone in the latest geological ages.

3. On the Superficial Deposits of Portions of the Avon and Severn Valleys and adjoining Districts. By T. G. B. Lloyd, Esq., C.E., F.G.S.

Introduction.

In the following paper I propose to describe first of all the facts which I have collected together upon the subject, and secondly to show what probable inferences may be drawn from them, in explanation of the relative antiquity of these river-valleys and their superficial deposits.

Part I. The Superficial Deposits of the Valley of the Avon.

Literature of the Subject. — Sir W. Jardine's ' Memoirs of H. E. Strickland ' contain several papers on the Geology of "Worcestershire and Warwickshire, in which are found very clear and accurate descriptions of many of the phenomena of the drifted deposits of the Avon valley and surrounding country. An account is given of the late Professor Strickland's discovery of land- and freshwater shells, associated with mammalian remains, in the gravel-beds of