Ixxii PROCEEDINGS, 



starting tlie party was not a large one. but eventually numbered 

 upwards of thirty. In the meadows below Hanstcads the meeting 

 of the waters of the Colne and Ver was seen, the Ver here being 

 much the larger stream, although considered to be a tributary of 

 the Colne. An attempt at an explanation of this anomaly has 

 already been given in our 'Transactions' (Vol. VI, p. xxix). 

 "Waterside Farm, where a tiny stream flows into the Ver off the 

 Boulder Clay of Bricket Wood, was then visited, and its pretty 

 garden by the river shown by the Misses Elwes. The Ver has 

 no other existing tributary, except a few miles higher up its 

 valley at the village of Bcdbourn, which doubtless takes its name 

 from a bourne which is recorded to have formerly sometimes 

 flowed there, presaging sickness and dire distress. The reason 

 is that the Ver, throughout its course, flows entirely on the 

 Chalk and with this exception has no subsidiary valley of sufficient 

 depth to reach the plane of saturation, the only bed upon the Chalk 

 in the valley of the Ver sufficiently impermeable to throw off water 

 being the Boulder Clay at Bricket "Wood. 



At Moor Mill the river was crossed and a path through the 

 meadows on its left bank taken for about half a mile, when it was 

 again crossed, only to be re-crossed finally at Park Street, and by 

 this means the walk to Sopwell was entirely through the meadows. 

 On the way the members were met by the Earl of Verulam, who 

 kindly in\'ited them to his residence and provided tea, which was 

 much appreciated after the walk of four or five miles on a hot and 

 sunny afternoon, for this was the first hot day of the summer and 

 the sky was cloudless. Lord Verulam has a collection of " curios " 

 of various kinds which attracted much interest ; and on a table ho 

 had spread out a large number of specimens from his gravel-pits, 

 including diifted fossils such as echinoderms and gryphseas, flints 

 of peculiar shape, and rocks from much older formations than any 

 in this neighbourhood, drifted by ice from the north. Some very 

 interesting fossils collected by the Hon. Captain Grimston, F.G.S., 

 were also seen, and remarks upon them were made by him. These 

 are chiefly from the Crag of the ISTorfolk coast. Some of the rarest 

 have been presented by him to the British Museum, and casts of 

 these were shown. 



Lord Verulam then conducted the party to a large pit of gravel 

 and sand on the high ground to the north-west of his residence, 

 and then to the gravel-pits nearer the river. After they had 

 been examined, the President, Mr. Whitaker, was called upon to 

 make some remarks, and, referring to the first pit visited, he 

 said that sand finely bedded, or current-bedded sand, must have 

 been deposited there by water, though he could not say definitely 

 whether this deposit of sand and gravel was of marine or of fresh- 

 water origin, no shells native to the deposit having been left in it, 

 but only rolled echinoderms and inocerami which had come out of 

 the Chalk. The greater number of the stones are flints from the 

 Chalk, and an enormous quantity of chalk must have been destroyed 

 to leave these flints. In the neighbourhood there was sometimes 



