Moolliopi^ ^atxxvalxsts fidh Club, 



The third Field Meeting of this year took place on Friday, August 20th. 

 The object of the meeting was to view the remarkable " Valley of Elevation," of 

 the district of Woolhope, which has acquired fame in the geological world by 

 the writings of Humboldt in his "Cosmos" (Vol. v., p. 231, Bohn's edition), 

 Sir R. Murchison in liis "Siluria," Rev. W. S. Symonds in his "Records 

 of the Rocks" and "Old Stones," and many other geologists. The district 

 is so familiar to the older members of the Woolhope Club as to receive too 

 often by them only a passing notice, owing to their— we regret we must say 

 it— delusion, that the younger members have all made themselves acquainted 

 with the records of these intensely interesting Silurian rocks, wherein those 

 lovers of nature whose labours have revealed so much of the outcome of 

 the stupendous agencies which operated around us, have left, as the fruits 

 of a human lifetime, so large a foundation whereon to build. The party 

 assembled in carriages opposite the Woolhope Club Room of the Free Library. 

 They travelled through Lugwardine, Bartestree, and Dormington, along the 

 Ledbury road, upon the rich alluvial soils of the ancient Wye and Lugg rivers, 

 which soils overlie the lower Old Red Sandstone. In the low level and the high 

 level drifts of this locality, relics of the ancient Lugg, and larger ancient Wye, 

 rivers interspersed with lakes, molars of mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, bison, and 

 Irish deer have been found in excavations which were carried on under the 

 observation of the late member of our Club, Mr. Curley, C.E., and have been 

 named by the Rev. W. S. Symonds — who has observed these ancient high level 

 drifts upon the top of the hill at Hagley (Lugwardine) on the right of the main 

 road and at Wilcroft upon its left, at an elevation of more than one hundred feet 

 above the rivers Lugg and Frome. On page 16G of his "Records of the Rocks," 

 1872, he says: "This drift was evidently transported from the north-east, and 

 not from the Woolhope country hai-d by. It is not merely a high level Lugg 

 drift, but it appears to have been deposited by a broad stream which flowed from 

 the Church Stretton district, partly, and only partly, in the direction of the 

 existing Lugg. . . ."* Again, in "Old Stones," page 83(1880), "Boulders, a 

 ton weight, of Caradoc conglomerate from the north were found here, and with 

 them masses from the Clee Hill basalt." Shucknall Hill, a conspicuous elevation 

 about two miles further north-east, is a mass of Aymestrey rock which has been 

 faulted on edge through the Old Red Sandstone. Bartestree is interesting because 



*The deposit has been quarried largely at Hagley, and Wilcroft, and has rendered to 

 searchers the teeth of the fossil horse {Eguus /ossilis), and a worn molar of Rhinoceros 

 Uchoimxis—Keccirds of the Rocks, f. i66. 



