Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/329

 Marine shells and Mammalian remains. — A carefully compiled list of the marine shells from the drift at Strethill is given in Mr. Maw's paper before mentioned. In the foregoing table of localities I have distinguished them by the following marks : — * * Marine shells and Mammalian remains ; * Marine shells without Mammalian remains ; __Mammalian remains without marine shells. They represent the substance of the information which I have derived from various sources, and the truth of which may require verification. The localities where marine shells have been hitherto most abundantly met with are situated between Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth, whilst the mammalian remains have been at present confined exclusively to the part of the valley lying between Worcester and Tewkesbury — the intermediate area between the St. James's pits below Bridgnorth and Northwick near Worcester not having yielded any recorded examples of either class of remains, as far as I have been able to ascertain. According to Mr. Maw's account, fragments of shells were found in the sandy unstratified clay at Strethill. In the museum at Worcester are a few fragmentary specimens labelled Turritella communis, Purpura lapillus, Cyprina islandica, &c, which were procured by the late Mr. Jabez Allies, of Worcester, from Kempsey, Bromwich Hill, &c. I have myself collected a few fragmentary shells from the grey shingly gravel and sand at Kempsey and Upton-on-Severn. Mr. Allies, in a pamphlet on " Particulars of a Stratum of Coal at Powick and Bromwich Hill," mentions that at the latter place " a fragment of a bone of some large animal, which lay on the top of the marl (Bed), together with a rhinoceros's tooth, and several recent species of marine shells, were dug out from the bottom of the gravel, at a depth of about 12 feet from the surface." He also says that " four teeth of a rhinoceros have been lately dug out from the bottom of a pit at Fleet's Bank, Sandlin, besides sea-shells, a coronary bone of a horse, teeth, and a fragmentary horn of a deer,"

Some years back, portions of a tusk, and teeth of a species of Elephant were dug out on the site of the Imperial Hotel, Great Malvern. According to Prof. Dawkins's list, the remains hitherto found in drift beds of the Severn valley belong to the following species of Mammalia : — Rhinoceros tichorhinus and Elephas primigenius.

Recapitulation of the principal Facts. — Commencing with the Avon valley and district, I have endeavoured to show that the Blue Lias clay of the higher ground, for some distance on each side of the valley, and in some of the minor valleys near Rugby, is covered extensively by a Boulder-clay, above which is found a stratified deposit of quartzose flinty gravel, whilst beneath it a thick bed of finely laminated sand forms the lowest stratum hitherto discovered. In the district of the New Bed marl, a red unstratified sandy clay, and beds of quartzose gravel containing a few flints, are found in place of the purple-coloured Boulder-clay and stratified flinty gravel above referred to, underneath which the laminated sand occurs also as far as the hills of Cracombe and Charlton. On the north