49 



Lyncombe and Widcombe Cemetery, the Bath Park, the Market 

 Place, the Mineral Water Hospital, Westgate Street, and other 

 spots. The gravels extend by way of Bathampton up the 

 Box valley, and also by way of Limpley Stoke and Freshford 

 towards Bradford, though at the latter places they lie in a trough 

 excavated in the inferior oolite. 



The materials of which this drift is composed have in soma 

 instances been brought from considerable distances, though to a 

 great extent it consists of materials derived from the adjoining 

 hills or the rocky outcrops of the valleys along which it is deposited. 

 Those must have been troublous times when the gravels were being 

 spread over the lower levels of the country, sweeping off the 

 mammalia that then existed in a common ruin. 



Although in the shelly pre-historic marls immediately above, 

 moUusca were so abundant, few comparatively are found in the 

 gravel. The condition of things must have been very unfavour- 

 able to their preservation, and it is only where there occasionally 

 happens to have been a cessation or a period of rest during the 

 deposit of the coarser gravels, and where in occasional pockets 

 finer marls or silts were left, that they are to be obtained. Although 

 this is the case with the delicate mollusca contemporaneous with 

 the drift, fossil remains are very abundant in the gravels, and 

 afford certain evidence of the beds and the districts from whence 

 they have been derived. 



Thus the gravels of Freshford, which contain many species of 

 oolitic and cretaceous remains, have associated with them others 

 from the carboniferous limestone, and water worn pebbles of this 

 formation in a small basiu south east of the village constitute 

 nearly a fourth of the drift, and there are also others from the old 

 red sandstone. In this instance it is evident the gravels have come 

 down the valley of the Frome, which is at right angles to the 

 Bradford valley, and these rocks have evidently been derived from 

 the Mendip area. This is further confirmed by the fact that the 

 gravels in the Bradford valley at their junction with the above 

 contain hematite iron ore, in some spots, in such quantities as might 

 almost pay for washing and extraction. Sub-angular flints have 



D 



