14 , HEREFORD DISTRICT. 



Felton, southward thoncc to Withington, Bartcstree Chapol, and 

 Mordiford. 



GEOLOGY. — The City of Hereford stands partly on the lower 

 Old Ecd sandstone, partly upon an alluvial gravel of the ancient 

 Wye ; ranges of hills composed of upper Silurian rocks, as the hills 

 of Backbury, Mordiford, and Fownhope, and the Cornstone rocks of 

 the Old Eed, as Dinmore, the Pyons, and Aconbury, rising on 

 every side. 



Tliis appears to be the i^Iace to allude to the drifts of Hereford- 

 shire, those relics of ancient rivers, lakes, and even sea straits, which 

 appertaining to the more recent of geological phenomena, belong, 

 nevertheless, to periods which, chronologically speaking, were 

 immensely remote, I have endeavoured, in another pamphlet, to 

 correlate, though I fear roughly and imperfectly, certain of the 

 phenomena displayed by the Worcestershire and Herefordshire 

 drifts ;* can only give the briefest notes here. 



The examination of the AVye leads me to the conclusion arrived 

 at by Mb. Eichardson, C.E., namely, that the Wye has altered 

 its course, and destroyed aud reformed its alluvia over and over 

 again, without having encroached upon the land bounding the 

 alluvium, to any appreciable degree, for many past ages. 



From the excavations of the Severn alluvium, we infer that 

 there was a time when the Severn flowed, as the river Shannon 

 does now, through a chain of various sized lalces. The lacustrine 

 silt has been penetrated in two or three instances, and lies some 

 forty feet below the alluvium of the Severn. The lake silts are full 

 of fresh water shells, fossilized bones, and vegetable remains. The 

 alluvium is nearly wanting in fresh water shells, as the Severn does 

 not cover its alluvial meadows with fresh water shells in its autumnal 

 Hoods. The bed of a lake is a quiet resting place for fresh water 

 moUusks, and there they congregate by thousands. I believe the 

 same history attaches to the Wye, and that, before the present 

 physical conditions obtained, the Wye flowed through a chain of 

 lakes, which were gradually silted up into marshes, until the over- 

 flowings of the river raised the alluvium, aud constituted the fertile 



* Geology of tlic llailway from Worcester to Hereford. liardwieke, riccadilly. 



