36 



aad independant of the detritus which, fills up the beds of the ancient 

 freshwater lakes. They are, in fact, the relics of broader rivers, of which 

 the channels must have been thirty or forty feet above the present river 

 channels ; and eighty or ninety feet, allowing forty feet for the depth of the 

 lakes, above the old lake bottoms. The low level drifts have been scooped 

 out by the action of the ancient Severn, Wye, Avon, and TJsk, and though 

 once continuous must be now studied above the margins of the silted up 

 lakes, now the Holms or large flat alluvial meadows along the river banks. 

 These beds of drift are well developed on the Avon, at Cropthorne and 

 Bricklehampton, at Defford and Eckington, and again near Tewkesbury. 

 They rest on a tabular platform of some thirty feet above the river, and 

 above them a high level drift occupies another platform, as at Bredon, 

 which stands at a height of seventy or eighty feet above the Avon. On 

 the Severn they may be studied in many localities, of which I may mention 

 the Workhouse Gravel Pits at Upton-on-Severn, and the Oxeye-gate, about 

 a mile from Tewkesbury, on the high road to Ledbury. TJpton-on-Severn 

 is a good locality for seeing the relative position of high level and low level 

 drifts ; the former occupying the high ground of Tunnel Hill, and the 

 latter ranging along the margin of the silted up lake of Upton race course. 

 I find these drifts weU developed on the banks of the Wye, in many 

 localities, as at Broomy HiU, near Hereford, and the opposite bank of the 

 river. They may be compared with the high level drift of that district, 

 near the Kites-nest, on the high road to Hay and Brecon, about four miles 

 west of Hereford. 



At Brecon, I found a most interesting old river, or lake margin of 

 weU-stratified gravel and sand, on the slope of a hill, at the height of sixty 

 or seventy feet above the river TJsk. The locality is Heolhir, or the Long 

 Lane, a little way south-east of Llanfaes. 



It is in these drifts that the explorer finds such numerous relies of the 

 extinct mammalia. Eemains of the Elephant, Hippopotamus, Ehinoceros, 

 Hyoena, with several species of Deer, and three of Bos, were collected by 

 the late Mr. Hugh Strickland in considerable abundance from these drifts 

 of the Avon; and by Mr. Jabes Allies on the Severn. From investigations, 

 which I have lately made, I entertain a decided opinion that the bone 

 caves of England appertain to the same epoch as the low level drifts. I 

 cannot, however, enter hero into the details necessary for the proof of this 

 correlation. I must, however, give my testimony against the supposition 

 that the cave bones were washed into their present site, or that diluvial 

 action had anything to do with their deposition. I believe that the caves 

 are neither more nor less than the relics of fissures in the rocks, through 

 which streams flowed, as streams flow now in Ireland in the mountain 

 limestone. The caves were themselves the haunts of the large cave 



