ON SOME PLATEAU DEPOSITS AT FELSTEAD 

 AND STEBBING. 



By J. FRENCH. 



1 N the Geological Survey Memoir illustrating sheet 47, the chapter 

 on Post-Glacial Drifts (p. 64) is introduced by the following 

 paragraph, by Mr. W. H. Penning : — 



" Here and there on the hills and higher grounds are patches of 

 loam and loamy gravel, never of any great extent or thickness, .but 

 forming portions of what once was probably a much larger extension. 

 The fragments now left generally occupy slight depressions in the 

 Boulder Clay or other bed on which they occur, and seem to pass 

 down into it without any definite line of division. They occur at 

 nearly all levels from the top of the Chalk escarpment down to the 

 higher terraces of the present valley system." 



To this Mr. Whitaker adds : " It is possible that some of these 

 loams may be allied to the stony loam just described." The de- 

 scription of this loam is as follows (pp. 62, 63) : — 



"A strong [misprint for 'stony'] loam or clay that often occurs 

 as a thin capping on the Boulder Clay, from the gradual decompo- 

 sition of which indeed it seems to have originated. The lumps of 

 chalk seems to have been dissolved out, whilst the insoluble flints, 

 etc. have been left behind, and the colour has changed to a 

 yellowish brown." 



A careful examination of these deposits will, I submit, not only 

 raise those probabilities to certainties, but will show that in these 

 gravels and loams we have representatives of climatal and other 

 conditions which have long since passed away. 



The examination of the position and of the mineral character of 

 the deposits in some sections in this neighbourhood afford material 

 for discussion. 



At Molehill Green, Felstead (three miles east of church), there 

 is an exposure of Post-Glacial Gravel. It is represented in colour on 

 the one-inch Drift Map as a loam, which is certainly an error as 

 regards its western margin, although true for part of the Green itself. 

 The sections made last winter about a furlong west of Whelpstone's 

 Farm gave eight to ten feet of gravel resting on Chalky Boulder Clay. 

 The position and composition of this gravel is important. A reference 

 to the map will show that the place occupies nearly the summit of a 

 l)romontory made by the curve of the river Ter. It does not quite 



