Geological Society. 301 



the usual marine drift of the district, the greater part of the boul- 

 ders contained in it, consisting of Lickey quartz-rock ; and the whole 

 rests on the new red sandstone. Above the carbonaceous bed is a 

 stratum, from six to eighteen inches thick, of fine clay, frequently 

 almost white, but in some instances of various shades of yellow and 

 red. Upon the clay is occasionally a bed of coarse gravel com- 

 posed of* the usual Lickey pebbles, and over it occurs a pale* red 

 sand, which gradually passes upwards into a sandy vegetable soil. 

 The average thickness of these overlying deposits is five feet. 



At a spot about 250 yards from the river, the place of the peat 

 is occupied by a bed of gravel composed principally of boulders 

 from eight to ten inches in circumference ; and above it lies the 

 prevalent light-coloured clay eighteen inches thick. The next stra- 

 tum, in ascending order, consists of very fine comminuted peat, with 

 small fragments of hazel and oak twigs, the whole bearing the ap- 

 pearance of a drifted mass. The highest bed, immediately under 

 the vegetable soil, is composed of sandy clay, and is about seven 

 inches thick. 



In some spots the lower vegetable deposit rests on a deeply 

 orange-coloured, ferruginous clay, and where this has been re- 

 moved, the action of water on the drift, Mr. Ick says, is very ap- 

 parent, the larger pebbles standing in high relief exactly in the 

 same manner as in the bottom of the present river, where a rapid 

 current flows over the gravel. 



Mr. Ick has traced this peaty deposit in places along the banks 

 of the river towards Birmingham, through Deritend, particularly at 

 Vaughton's Hole, where it is eighteen inches thick. It has also been 

 penetrated in making wells and culverts in the lower part of Dig- 

 beth, and nuts and bones have been found there. 



The next communication read is entitled " A Postscript to the 

 Memoir on the occurrence of the Bristol Bone-Bed in the neighbour- 

 hood of Tewkesbury," by Hugh Edwin Strickland, Esq., F.G.S. 



Since the reading of the former communication (Phil. Mag. S. 3. 

 vol. xxi. p. 540.) Mr. Strickland has ascertained that the bone-bed 

 occurs at least ten miles further north, or at Defford Common, in 

 Worcestershire, making a total range of 104 miles. At this locality 

 are some old salt-works belonging to the Earl of Coventry, and the 

 shaft, which was sunk about seventy years ago to the depth of 1 75 

 feet, was emptied a few months since of the brine with which it is 

 wont to overflow. At the bottom of the shaft, which descends 

 through the lias into the grey marl of the triassic series, but without 

 reaching the red marl, is a tunnel that follows the dip of the strata for 

 about 160 yards. The shaft, Mr. Strickland says, consequently 

 intersects the horizon of the " bone-bed," and among the rubbish 

 thrown out, he found considerable quantities of the peculiar white 

 sandstone with bivalves (Posidonomya), shown in his former paper to 

 represent in Worcestershire the bone- bed of Aust and Axmouth ; but 

 he also found specimens of the sandstone charged with the same 

 description of teeth, scales and coprolites so abundant at Coomb Hill 

 and the localities just mentioned. 



