59 



surrounded by hills : it is in the valleys and ravines among 

 these hills, that the shell deposits are found. 



As my time in the neighbourhood was limited, I visited 

 only two of them. The first and most considerable one is 

 at Kappelbackar, about one mile south of the town ; after 

 you have left the town and begin to ascend the winding- 

 road up the hill, you see signs of the shells on both sides of 

 the road filling up the ravine. The roads are, in fact, 

 repaired with the shells, and a promenade has lately been 

 laid out and planted with trees, which has caused the 

 destruction of some of these shell heaps. The ravine is 

 entirely filled up with shells to a depth varying from about 

 20 to 30 feet. At the bottom of the ravine runs a small 

 stream ; upon its bank, behind some cottages, I saw a small 

 pit had been scooped out in a bed of dark blue clay or silt, 

 this underlies the mass of shells, and I believe is continued 

 under the town of Uddevalla, and probably occupies the 

 bottom of many of the valleys near the coast, as the same 

 kind of clay is said to be now forming in the fjords in 

 proximity to the land. I did not get any clear section of 

 the whole depth, as, when standing by the stream at the 

 bottom of the ravine, the bank was obscured by talus and 

 alterations of the road. 



Dr. Jeffreys, in his paper on these deposits read before 

 the British Association in 1863, speaks of, lying upon this 

 clay, " a bed of sandy gravel with rolled stones or pebbles, 

 containing Mytilus Edulis and a small form of Saxicava 

 arctica. This bed was about six inches deep, and resembled 

 a raised beach." This bed I was not able to detect. 



My specimens were collected, for the most part, from the 

 uppermost layer of those closely compacted heaps which 

 line the road as it crosses the top of the hill. 



The most prominent and abundant shells are those of 

 Mya truncata var. Uddevalensis and Saxicava rugosa 



