22 



gets deeper from the level of the banks and whenever they encroach on the ad- 

 joining land on either side, they leave on the opposite convex side of the bank a 

 deposit of gravel or shingle, which in time is silted over and becomes meadow 

 land, but there is always a visible mark left to show what has taken place. 

 Granted, that a succession of floods might have accounted for the great amount of 

 alluvial deposit ; this does not account for the abrupt appearance of the bank at 

 different places ; the deposit brought down by floods would unquestionably have 

 had a tendency to fill up the intermediate land, but not to scoop out the banks on 

 either side, which bear evident appearance of having been water-washed, and at 

 a level far higher than any floods have been known to extend. Such an event as 

 I have endeavoured to demonstrate is not at all unlikely to have occurred. Just 

 above the town of Kington, in this county, there is a farm called " The Lake," 

 through which a little stream of water called the " Back Brook" runs, with low 

 flat ground on either side of it ; and close to the town there is a place called " The 

 Broken Bank." These facts speak for themselves. The river Shannon runs, I 

 believe, through a succession of lakes, and my firm belief is that the river Wye 

 once did the same. There are evident marks of a lake below Glasbury, which, I 

 think, extended nearly to the Hay. Again at Letton, on both sides of the river 

 as seen from the railway bridge at Strangwood, extending under Caple wood 

 and Lynedown to the Hole in the Wall, at Backney, Ross, Goodrich, and at 

 Huntsham, which latter place is the limit to my knowledge. But with respect 

 to the subject of these observations, I think we may rest assured that God, in 

 His own good time, saw fit by some operation of nature, as we call it, to drain 

 off the water and " bid the dry land appear," and thus convert what was useless 

 and barren into some of the best and richest land in this beautiful county. 



THE REV. JAMES DAVIES'S PAPER. 



The following is the full text of the Rev. James Davies's paper, which was 

 read at the meeting of the Woolhope Club, on the 20th September : — 



" OLD HEKEFOEDSHIKE CUSTOMS." 



Although the overspread of railways has wrought such a change in the 

 speed of the march of intellect, that probably not even the most old-fashioned 

 English county can plead ignorance of the meaning of the word " obsolescense," — 

 that is, the gradual dying out of old customs — I consider that Herefordshire, owing 

 to its bad roads, absence of manufactures on a large scale, and purely agricultural 

 population, must have had as good a field, both for possessing and retaining such, 

 as most. If ' ' trade's unfeeling train, " which in a non-natural sense may for the 

 nonce be taken to mean " the iron horse," has now " dispossessed the swain" of 

 not a few of these, it is of less practical use to lament and regret them, than to en- 

 deavour to gather the remembrance of them into a pious record, and to discrimi- 

 nate between the good, bad, and indifferent, to the end that those which are 

 capable — as some certainly are — of being utilised and applied, may revive, at any 

 rate in the memory, whilst the others may either, where harmless, though vulgar, 

 give food for our educated complacency, or, where simply superstitious, minister, 



