— — ” 
257 
always be submitted to the much more intense action of denuding agencies of any 
kind than the lower lying district of Hereford. At the present moment, for 
example, denudation of the primeval rocks of the Woolhope district is most 
actively going on. At Hereford they are, and have for the last geological age at 
least, been buried beneath a protecting layer of river gravel and post tertiary 
deposits. 
I take it that we know very little of how the great mass of this denudation 
oceurred, or when; that the sea had a share in it we may suspect, that ice had 
much to do with it there can be no doubt—and we know that river agency has 
been very powerful. But of the former chapters of the history we know little 
except that there were such chapters ; of some of the last chapters there are many 
more or less distinct but fragmentary records. At considerable elevations on the 
flanks of the Wye valley are deposits of river gravel, such as could only have been 
deposited by considerable streams, probably by the Wye itself. By saying the 
Wye, Ido not wish to insist that the watersheds were at those dates precisely 
the same as at present, but that a large river passed down the valley past Here- 
ford, as at present, admits of little question. Since the date of the higher and 
earlier, at least, of these gravels, there is considerable evidence that a minor 
glacial period occurred. But the chief interest of these gravels in the present 
connection is the proof they afford, that ata geologically recent date the Wye flowed 
at a level sufficiently elevated for it to have entered and swept round the Wool- 
hope valley—and there exist deposits of gravel and drift in the Woolhope valley 
itself to attest that this was very probably the case. Look, again, to the lower 
part of the Wye—at the Wye between Ross and Chepstow. Ask what was the 
level of the Wye at Mordiford before those deep and picturesque gorges were cut 
through? Will not the answer again be, that it was sufficiently high to have 
swept the Woolhope valley ? 
The inner slope of the outer ridge of the Woolhope Valley is obviously 
formed of talus, due to the subaerial destruction of a cliff or rock wall ; and at 
Adam’s Rocks we have still remaining a portion of the cliff not yet entirely lost 
in the accumulating deb’: formed by its own destruction. IT think it is not by 
any means an abuse of the scientific imagination to picture these cliffs, perhaps 
not entirely formed—for probably much denudation had previously been accom- 
plished—but having their precipitous faces renewed by the rushing waters of the 
Wye flowing past their bases, at that remote date—however recent the geologist 
may consider it—when the bed of the Wye was many feet above its present level. 
Probably the modern geologist will smile at my remarks, and suggest that 
no one now does fully accept the catastrophic theory. I can only say that our 
transactions show that we still largely accept it to explain the denudation of the 
Woolhope Valley. Iam no geologist, and may have fallen into various errors in 
what I have said relating to the processes by which the Woolhope Valley has 
been formed. But I have thought it well to take this opportunity of asserting 
that the Woolhope Club, as a body (or at least I myself as a member of it), do 
not adhere to the belief that the complicated appearances we observe are to be 
