PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 1 5 



Within three quarters of a mile, at the coal shaft, is a large 

 quantity of water— and that underground reservoirs are 

 not uncommon was shewn during the construction of the 

 Severn Tunnel, which was flooded more than once by land 

 springs being cut when the approaches to it were made. 



Reference was made to the cause of the red oxide of iron 

 which gives the colour to the New Red Sandstone, of 

 which the following explanation in Professor Philhps' 

 book on the " Geology of Oxford and Valley of the 

 Thames," page 99. 



The sea received at successive times the spoils of different lands by 

 currents arriving in different directions. There was first a pre- 

 Cambrian land, which yielded one set of materials ; next a pre-Silurian 

 land, whose mineral constitution was not the same. Then Silurian 

 land appeared, followed by Devonian and Carboniferous land. 



Twice in this flow of time came the red deposits, which may be 

 called exceptional, and whose origin is not explored. We may indeed 

 suppose the sesquioxide of the Poikilitic series to have been derived 

 from the red haematites of t"he carboniferous limestone (this haematite 

 is often of Permian age) or, as has been sometimes conjectured,- from 

 the old red rocks ; but in each of these cases remains the question : 

 "Whence came originally the red oxide ? " Perhaps, we may answer, 

 from decomposed minerals of volcanic or metamorphic origin; 

 silicated peroxides altered in an immensity of time by the slow action 

 of the elements. In this point of view it is worth calling to mind that 

 enormous physical changes— great displacements of land and sea- 

 preceded, in each case, the deposition of the only two extensive and 

 abundant stratified deposits of red oxide of iron known in Europe. 

 One later case occurs, indeed, at the base of the chalk of Yorkshire, 

 Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, and for that a similar supposition has been 

 proposed. 



To complete the retrospect, we have only to call attention to the 

 well-established fact of the paucity of fossils in the purely red beds ; 

 their comparative rarity, or even total absence, in the purple beds; 

 and their abundance (even contemporaneous abundance) in the grey 

 beds. Was marine life very rare in the directions from which the red 

 streams flowed? Was the fine red mud hostile to the growth of 



