Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/319

1870.] LLOYD AVON AND SEVERN VALLEYS. 211 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. p. 195) the following mammalia are noted under the locality " Beckford."

Cervus tarandus. Bos primigenius. Bison priscus.

Sus scrofa. Rhinoceros tichorhinus. Elephas primigenius.

The President of the Cotteswold Club, Sir W. V. Guise, Bart., F.G.S., in his address for 1865, stated that, when at Beckford, in company with the Rev. W. S. Symonds, he found a fragment of a shell which Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys pronounced to be a portion of a Lucina borealis. I have also seen it stated that Miss Holland, of Dumbleton, found a Rissoa at the same place.

Before concluding the description of the Lower Series I may perhaps be permitted to call attention to the occurrence of a stratified deposit occurring on the eastern side of Cropthorne Hill, which has not yielded hitherto any positive evidence to show whether it is of marine or freshwater origin. A section in a sand-pit gives : —

(Surface of ground 110 feet above the sea, and 60 feet above the Avon.) ft. in.

(1) Vegetable soil 1 0

(2) Irregular bed of dark red loam, containing large and small pebbles of white quartz and flints ... 4 0

(3) Fine red laminated sand 2 0 (4) Quartzose gravel 0 3 (5) Fine red sand 3 0 (6) Quartzose gravel 0 3 (7) Fine red sand 1 0 (8) Quartzose gravel 0 2 (9) Light-red laminated sand 3 0 (10) Dark red loam 0 6 (11) Dark red sand 4 0 (12) Red clayey loam 0 2 (13) Red sand 2 6

Bottom of pit. 21 10

The sand has been excavated to a depth of about 30 feet from the surface without having reached the basement rock. No traces of mammalian or molluscan remains have hitherto been discovered. The summit of the hill on which the village of Cropthorne stands is covered by a capping of gravel, apparently of a similar character to that occurring on Cropthorne Heath, already described. As far as I am aware, boulders are seldom met with in the gravelly drift of the Upper and Lower Series.

Freshwater Deposits. — Quartzose, flinty gravel, and sand, with occasional seams of clay. (Land and freshwater shells and mammalian remains.)

From some point between the villages of Lawford and Stoneleigh, the exact locality of which is not known, beds of alluvial gravel and sand can be traced, with occasional interruptions, on both sides of the Avon, to within a short distance of the town of Tewkesbury, their heights above the river increasing for the most part as they approach its mouth. On the whole they present a remarkable uniformity of composition, thickness, and arrangement of parts,