28 PROC. COTTESVVOLD CLUB vol. xili. 



The horse-shoe curves of the Lower Wye Valley are 

 still unaccounted for. It is difficult to imagine that they 

 were made when the river was flowing at a high level as 

 a Thames tributary, because it would have then been 

 flowing over Mesozoic rocks. That supposition, that the 

 curves initiated in Mesozoic rocks would be continued 

 into the harder Carboniferous beneath, would not be 

 easy to contend for. 



Another theory may be put forward. The horse-shoe 

 curves of the Wye were formed while the Mesozoic strata 

 were being deposited. This Lower Wye area was low- 

 lying land, and its river drained on a gentle slope into a 

 Mesozoic sea on the east. On that low-lying area it 

 would meander to form big curves. The channel of this 

 river was subsequently drowned out, submerged beneath 

 the encroaching sea, and it became filled with Mesozoic 

 rocks. When the new river system was started it was 

 roughly on the line of the present river. When that was 

 tapped by the Severn and given a very quick fall, it 

 naturally sought the easiest erodable channel, and that was 

 along the line of the old fiUed-up meandering channel. 

 It re-excavated that channel in preference to the hard 

 Carboniferous rocks, and then, being established therein, it 

 had to follow its sinuosities as it subsequently dec[)encd 

 its bed. This much is certain, the horse-shoe curves 

 were develoj)cd first, and the gorge was developed later. 

 The sinuous course of the gorge is on account of the 

 previous existence of the meanders. 



This theory may seem elaborate ; and yet the late 

 Edward Wilson |)ointcd out to me that the Bristol Avon, 

 flowing through a similar Carboniferous Limestone gorge, 

 has found, or adapted itself to, a pre-Jurassic channel. 

 For there is, in the Clifton gorge of the Avon, Dolomitic 

 Conglomerate of the Trias, showing that a channel had 

 been alreadv formed in Triassic time. But, as there is 



