206 



Cirencester, five miles further, over the porous beds of the 

 Inferior Oolite, the volume had diminished to 45 cubic feet per 

 minute, — a very surprising and instructive fact. 



Mr. Lttcy read some notes by Mr. John Jones, in illustration 

 of a careful diagram of the well-known Drybrook Section in the 

 Forest of Dean, comprising 104 yards, in 154 divisions, of the 

 passage beds between the Old Red and the Carboniferous 

 Limestone. This section, drawn to scale, has since been 

 published in our Club Transactions, in which it forms an 

 important feature. 



The reading of this paper was followed by a discussion on 

 Mr. Witchell's paper, read at the last meeting of the Club, 

 on ^^The Denudation of the Cotteswolds." Mr. Witchell 

 maintained that the valley of the Severn has no denudation 

 apart from that of the Cotteswolds — ^that the hollowing out of 

 the valley of the Severn, no less than that of the valleys of the 

 Cotteswolds, is alike due to rain, rivers, and atmospheric forces. 

 This theory he supported by a series of well-observed facts, 

 drawn from the Cotteswold valleys, in which he urged the 

 absence of all marine evidence in the gravels and drifts, and 

 argued for their fluviatile or atmospheric origin, from the 

 presence in abundance in such situations of land and freshwater 

 shells. He regarded the gradual denudation of the Fullers 

 Earth as the effective cause of all the phenomena of denudation 

 observable in the Cotteswold combes. Dr. Weight agreed with 

 Mr. WiTCHELL in many of the points laid down by him, and 

 was disposed to concede great powers of denudation to the 

 effects of atmospheric agency ; but he thought Mr. Witchell 

 in error in extending the effects of such agency too widely. It 

 must not be forgotten that the Cotteswold Hills have been under 

 the sea, and are made up of materials of unequal density — that 

 the valleys are probably due to cracks or lines of fissure, along 

 which the eroding forces have worked and sawed their way, 

 while springs have further modified the valleys thus scooped 

 out. But after all allowances have been made for these and 

 other such agencies, it is not possible to look upon such outHers 

 as Bredon, Robin's Wood, and Churchdown hills, without the 



