—————— ES ee CC, Ce! 
315 
angles rounded off and triangular in shape, weighing about 2 cwt., 
measured ‘by myself during my last visit yesterday, was 
1ft. Tin. on its ‘longest side and Gin. thick, There were 
many others, not much smaller, all lying near the base of the 
gravels. Could’ water alone have brought these so far from 
their site, or was it water in the form of floe ice ? 
~- Whence did all these come from ? 2 Fe 
~ What a tale of great physical changes does this unfold, of changes 
which have” taken gh in our valley in geologically recent 
times ! : 
Gravels, consisting of rounded pebbles, indicate a considerable 
amount of abrasion by rolling, and that the former water flow 
must have been of vastly greater volume than at present. 
The contents--of the’ gravel beds -bespeak their distant 
home whence they have come.. Old, Red Sandstone, Mountain 
Limestone and Flint did not come from the hills which 
immediately " girdle our ‘Bath basis. Their source lies far 
. away at the back of these hills. We must go to the _Mendips 
“to find the parent. rocks in that direction. The transporting 
_ agent must be sought in “water of some form. We have then the 
Avon’ ‘to look ‘td as the agent, but not the decrepid old dirty 
stream that slowly and sluggishly winds its devious way through 
the alluvial’ flats to its mouth. But looking back through the 
corridors of time we must picture to ourselves the former Avon in 
all its youthful vigour cutting its frolicsome way from the water 
shed, probably much higher than at present, through the Old Red 
: Sindstone, Mountain Limestone and Jurassic gorges, and rolling 
down i in its course its burden from those formations, bursting its 
way ‘through the Frome and Warleigh Valleys into the Bath basin. 
Rollicking away through the valley and depositing its contents 
_ how on this side now on that, until it emptied its waters 
through the Avon gorge at Clifton into the Severn Sea. Finally 
reducing the level of the land to baselevel, when its work is 
“finished, and its energetic young life nigh extinct. 
