233 



of rocks and water -worn boulders in very irregular order. The great b\ilk of 

 these deposits was probably carried oflf on the rising of the land, after its long 

 submergence, when the river found its way through the great barrier formed by 

 the hard ridge of limestone. StrethiU is now the record of what the whole valley 

 of the Severn was covered with before its denudation. The materials of this 

 enormous mass of drift, Mr. Maw was con^'inced, were for the most part of local 

 origin, but the occurrence of certain Lias and Chalk remains. Oolitic, and parti- 

 cvilarly of boulders and granite pebbles, prove that at least a portion of them had 

 been transported some 120 miles from the north. Large blocks of Cumberland 

 and Scotch granite occur thickly strewn at Bourton, beyond Wenlock, at a height 

 of 800 feet above the sea level. These blocks could only have been brought by 

 the agency of floating ice, and must have been deposited from icebergs stranded on 

 these high hiUs, when the sea submerged nearly the whole of the west of England. 



Mr. Maw has collected a large series of shells and fossils from the drift bed 

 during the construction of the railway which passed through them. The shells 

 amount to some forty varieties, though often in a very fragmentary state, Car- 

 dium Edule, Tellina Balthica, and particularly Turitella terehra, were the most 

 perfect and frequent. All these shells are of recent species. The fossils were 

 from the Silurian, Carboniferous, Diassic and Chalk formations ; a few marine 

 organisms, and occasionally some vegetable remains of oak or of yew trees. These 

 shells and fossils were afterwards shown to the Club at Benthall Hall. 



The members searched in vain for any shell fragments at this particular 

 spot, and the way was soon taken up the steep hUl of Wenlock Limestone, which 

 is there called Benthall Edge. The woods were too wet to tempt the botanists 

 present to leave the path, and the discussion still went on about the stratified 

 deposits they had visited, and the very great length of time it must have required 

 for their formation. 



The Rev. J. La Touche, who had conducted for some six years a series of 

 observations to ascertain the amount of detritus carried down by the river Onney, 

 stated as the outcome of all his work, carried on with so much ability and per- 

 severance, that he found it would require a period of 400 years to cause a single 

 inch of denudation from the valley, whose floods and storms and rain waters 

 this small river carries off. 



On the summit of Benthall Edge, immediately above a quarry, which left 

 an open and extensive view of the surrounding country, Mr. Maw gave a most 

 interesting 



DESCRIPTION OF MAIN GEOLOGICAL PEATUEES OP THE DISTRICT, 



aided by maps and sections, which he had kindly brought with him. This in- 

 formal lecture was a model of what a "field address " should be — clear, precise, 

 and practical, and in answer to the many questions put to him, Mr. Maw showed 

 how closely he had studied the physical and geological character of the hills and 

 valleys before him. 



BenthaU HaU was close at hand, but on the way there a cluster of Agaricus 

 Pholiota mutabilis was gathered, and also a specimen of Boletus elegans, which 



