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VOL. XIV. (3) | THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS I9I 
atmospheric weathering, or are partly composed of river- 
sand, that the alleged level surface of the Lias does not 
exist, and that the occurrence of marine plants in the area 
is due to saline matter derived from the Keuper marls. 
On a review of the whole case, I feel myself obliged to 
return a verdict of ‘ Not Proven.” 
There is, however, some positive evidence distinctly 
adverse to the marine hypothesis. The gravels with worn 
sea-shells frequently contain the unworn bones of terres- 
trial mammalia. I have already referred to the unworn 
tooth of a Rhzuoceros, found in the gravel at Bromwich 
Hill. At Upton-on-Severn, Symonds detected remains of 
Elephas primigenius, associated with worn and broken 
marine shells. Sir William Guise, according to Mr Lucy, 
picked up a marine shell, Lucena borealis, at Beckford, 
in gravel containing Evlephas, Rhinoceros, Bos, Sus, and 
Cervus. All the living representatives of these mammals 
frequent the vicinity of rivers, where they can obtain fresh 
water. It is therefore very difficult to understand why 
these remains should be usually found in the very middle 
of what, on Murchison’s hypothesis, must have been a 
marine strait. The natural and reasonable supposition is 
that the deposits in which the bones are found were laid 
down by the river itself. 
I am not aware that terrestrial or fresh-water shells have 
been discovered in any of the gravels containing the de- 
rived marine mollusca; but they have been observed in 
the mammalian gravels of the Avon between Evesham 
and Tewkesbury. The Worcester Museum possesses the 
remains of the Mammoth (£. przmigenius) from Crop- 
thorne and Fladbury, the f/7Apopotamus from Little 
Comberton and Eckington, and Los Jlongifrons from 
Eckington. Mammalian fossils in the Cropthorne gravels 
were found by Strickland’ to be associated with shells of 
t Scientific Writings on Geology, p. 95. 
