PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 219 



Strickland made such a restoration of the Malverns, 

 shewing a "great fault" of some 12,500 feet.* Though 

 the details of his diagram may be open to criticism, 

 yet it forms a good basis uj)on which to start in the 

 reconstruction of what may be called the lost strata of our 

 own country. Thus on the east he shows about 11,000 

 feet of Palaeozoic rocks above the present level of the 

 Malverns. On the west we may place, above sea-level, 

 Trias rocks about 4000, Lias 1800, Oolites 2000, and 

 Cretaceous 1200 feet. The given thicknesses are only 

 approximate : they probably understate the case ; for near 

 a shore line would be expected a greater accumulation of 

 strata than at a distance. 



The Cretaceous strata would be unconformable to the 

 Jurassic rocks. And by the time the Cretaceous strata 

 were laid down the degradation of the Malvern land-area 

 by denudation during Jurassic times would have 

 sufficiently lowered it to permit of its submergence 

 beneath Cretaceous deposits. 



Since it is evident that the Malverns must have stood 

 up as land while the sea was depositing the rocks of the 

 Cotteswold Hills, and since it is thus possible to map the 

 relative areas of land and sea in this district, it is not 

 uninteresting to study a map of the world constructed 

 from similar data, showing the distribution of land and 

 water during the Jurassic Period. Three rather remark- 

 able points then demand attention. First, all the great 

 mountain ranges of the world — the Andes, the Rocky 

 Mountains, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Caucasus — were, 

 like our Cotteswold Hills, being slowly formed in the bed 

 of the sea during Jurassic times : they have all been raised 

 to their present positions by subsequent earth movements. 



* 'On the KIcvatory Forces wliicli Raised the Malvern Hills;' Phil. Mag., 4th ser. 

 vol. ii., p. II, pi. I. 1851. (Reprint in "Seientilic Writings," p. 192.) 



