26 
was agrand work stretching over countless ages, and made up of innumerable 
details all carefully elaborated, and all parts of the great process by which the 
world was gradually fitted to be the habitation of an intelligent being, capable 
of understanding the mighty work of which he was the ordained head, and 
capable of honouring and serving the beneficent Maker of all. The geologic 
view of creation seemed to him to exhibit the great work in the form worthiest 
of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness (applause). 
The following paper by the Rev. H.C. Key, on a Boulder at Symond’s Yat, 
was taken as read :— 
ON A S80-CALLED ‘‘ ERRATIC BOULDER OF PENNANT SANDSTONE” AT SYMOND’S YAT. 
In the year 1870, on the occasion of the meeting of the Woolhope Club at 
Symond’s Yat, Dr. Thomas Wright, F.G.S., drew attention to a large stone to be 
seen on the private path adjoining, which he pronounced to be an erratic boulder 
of Pennant sandstone, and upon which he delivered a special address. I was not 
present at the meeting, and it was not till a year or more afterwards that I read 
the account of his address in the Transactions of the Club; my impression had 
been that the stone in question was mill-stone grit, but I had no opportunity of 
examining it and the locality carefully till the Club met ‘in the neighbourhood on 
Friday last, the 17th inst., when, after Mr. Symonds’ paper at the Doward caves 
was concluded, I went, in company with other members of the Club, to Symonds’s 
Vat for that purpose, and the result of the examination, which is by no means 
unimportant, I now lay before the club. 
6 
On pages 50 and 51 of the volume of Transactions for 1870, will be found the 
following paragraphs, which give the substance of the chief points of Dr. Wright’s 
address :— 
‘‘The party then proceeded to the private grounds in the Yat to examine 
a large boulder of hard yellow sandstone called ‘Pennant,’ which is here seen 
resting upon carboniferous limestone, and has been brought into its present 
position by some powerful agency, for it is clearly a rock mass that has been 
transported from a distance, there being no such rock as that of which it formed 
a part in the vicinity of Symond’s Yat. . . . . After such an example as the 
Doctor adduced, it is easy to understand how this block of Pennant sandstone was 
removed from its original bed to the limestone of the Yat, for, as the whole valley 
of the Wye affords evidence of glacial action, doubtless this great natural force 
was the agency by which it was transported thither. This Pennant rock where it 
now stands is entirely out of its natural position, and therefore was lifted into its 
resting place by glacial action (applause).” 
The ablest and most careful geologists will sometimes be mistaken, and 
some excuse may justly be made for Dr. Wright’s mistake in this instance on the 
score of his visit to Symond’s Yat being so brief and hurried ; he may possibly 
have accepted his facts on the authority of another, but however that may be, his 
conclusions respecting this block of stone are unquestionably incorrect. 
