60 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1901 
reducing in size the more exposed portions. It is worthy 
of note, that screes at the present day often strew slopes 
and hill sides where regular cliffs are absent. In the 
Carboniferous Limestone districts these accumulations 
are frequently seen, as in Goblin Combe, near Wrington, 
Somerset. Upon the subsidence of Palzozoic land, these 
screes were first washed by the waters of the Keuper 
inland sea. Thus the pre-Keuper scree would be formed 
into conglomerate. Moreover, the sea would undermine 
the base of the scree then above water, and cause a dis- 
tribution of some of its constituents over a wider area 
of the coast line, whilst the finer matter would be- 
transported farther out from land. 
The contemporaneity of this and succeeding analogous 
marginal deposits with the strata deposited farther out to 
sea is supported by the mode in which the upper portion 
of the conglomerate is dovetailed into the normal con- 
temporaneous strata." The majority of sections now 
exposed appear to be the bases of such pre-Keuper screes, 
which had not been subject to littoral action, and, therefore, 
the included fragments are mainly sub-angular. 
Doubtless before the final planing down by the waves 
of the respective Mesozoic seas, the uplands were much 
higher and more rugged. There must also have been 
areas of accumulation in the islands which escaped 
the influences of the Keuper sea: these were to 
be formed into conglomerates by sea agency in later 
epochs. The circumambient conglomerates of the 
succeeding epochs become less massive in proportion to 
their distance from the base of the original pre-Keuper 
scree. Any rock fragments, which might fall from the 
more elevated ground, would proportionally diminish in 
quantity, as the denudation of those more elevated parts 
progressed. 
1 De la Beche, “ Geological Observer ” (1853), pp- 476. e¢ sgq-, figs. 165, 166. 
