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61 
There are many Boulders of foreign origin within a few miles 
of this spot. 
When we reflect that there is probably not a bed in the 
Inferior Oolite in our neighbourhood sufficiently hard to retain 
strie, the explanation seems to me simple. Marks are rarely 
found except upon dense compact rocks, like the one I hold 
in my hand from the Carboniferous Limestone. 
The numerous outliers of Oolite which remain shew clearly, 
that when the Glacial period set in, the Cotteswolds stretched 
much farther to the westward than they do now; and after 
the great submergence when the hills rose from beneath the 
water and the climate began to ameliorate, frozen snow rested 
in the form of land ice upon the slopes, which, when the 
summer sun began to melt it, would slide down into the valleys 
with large masses of the rock upon which it reposed. The rain- 
fall. was probably much greater than it is now, and floods would 
carry away the large masses of fallen rock still further into the 
valleys, reducing them by attrition; and subsequently owing 
to a depression of the land the sea water came up the Severn 
valley, washing and rubbing the rocks until they became reduced 
to gravel, and which I believe to be the origin of the beds 
we meet with some distance from the hills, as at Frampton, 
Barnwood, and, indeed, all gravels that are derived from our 
- local rocks. 
