107 



the present paper much too long for this meeting, we reserve them 

 for future communication. 



Looking towards the hill-top, we are reminded by the equivalents of 

 the Stonesfield slate, or other beds still higher in the series which occupy 

 it, that between the Fuller's-earth bed upon which we stand, and that in 

 whose detritus like shells and remains are embedded to the eastward all 

 the Upper Oolitic, "Wealden, Cretaceaous, and Tertiary formations are 

 interposed ; and however great may be, in our view, the antiquity upon 

 which we insist for our proteges, what insignificant parvenus they become 

 when compared with their predecessors of whatever kind in any bed 

 beneath them. Here we are compelled to pause and recognize the lapse 

 of a vast epoch, of which the only record remains in the evidence of 

 erosive power by which the combes around, and broad vale before us, have 

 been produced, and by which enormous rock masses spread over a great 

 tract of country have been swept away, from the highest of the Jurassic 

 system developed here, to those of the Silurian May-hill Sandstone, and 

 Conglomerates. Over the formations thus denuded flowed the sea which 

 separated the principality of Wales from England by the Straits of 

 Malvei-u, as traced by Murchison, Strickland, and Buckman, of whom 

 the last named has more particularly brought the fact under our notice 

 in a special treatise. 



By an attentive summary of the facts there recorded, conviction may 

 be arrived at, as regards the truth of the theory which it was desii-ed to 

 establish, although no particular efi'ort is there made to solve certain 

 difficulties presented by the subsequent accumulations of gravels and 

 cU'ift in the space once occupied by the ocean waters, and upon these we 

 will venture a few remarks. When we examine neighbouring straits, 

 accessible to tidal action, we find that the central point, or that where 

 the opposing currents meet, as might be expected, is the most favourable 

 to resistance of erosion and deposit of sediment ; this therefore, upon 

 the bodily gradual elevation of the region into the state of dry land 

 would be the first exempted from the as constantly retroceding action of 

 the tides. A peninsula once formed, we may follow with tolerable 

 accuracy, although but in imagination, the changes which followed. The 

 opposite shores of its isthmus necessarily became the heads of two deep 

 inlets, which finally subsided into the estuaries of the Severn and Dee, the 

 once, when debouching into the strait, insignificant streams, now expanded 

 into the great waterveins of the newly exalted land,; may we not thus 

 account for the more frequent occurrence of sea shells at present existing 

 in the British, St. George's, and Bristol Channels, at Bridgnorth, and 

 other localities in Shropshire, Stafibrdshire, and Worcestershire, than 



