Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/436



XXVII. Notice of some peculiarities observed on the Gravel if Litchfield.

By A. AIKIN, Esq.

[Read 15th March, 1816.]

red sand or gravel (for it may be called by either name) which overspreads the country in the neighbourhood of Litchfield, has presented to me some remarkable appearances; a short notice of which may perhaps without impropriety be offered to the Geological Society.

The principal ingredient in this alluvial mass is quartz, in small roundish grains, mixed rather copiously with scales of silvery mica, and tinged of a brownish red colour by oxid of iron. In some places no other substances than those just enumerated make their appearance, and the soil is a loose incoherent driving sand. More generally however the grains are slightly cemented together by a little red clay, and rounded pebbles of various sizes and qualities are interspersed. I am unacquainted with the thickness of this bed, but excavations to the depth of about thirty feet have been formed in it by the side of the road to Birmingham, about two miles from Litchfield. At this place the pebbles are so abundant as to compose a considerable proportion of the entire mass, and it is here that