88 SIXTH REPOKT — 1836. 



would remove much of the difficulty experienced in the study of this 

 subject, but it appeared not generally applicable to the examples in ques- 

 tion, because of the evidence afforded by ossiferous deposits and caverns 

 in Yorkshire, that some parts of the country were dry land at the time 

 of the occurrence of the diluvial floods. 



On the Ancient and Modern Hydrography of the River Severn. By R. 



I. MURCHISON, V.P.R.S. 



On the western side of the Vale of the Severn, Mr. Murchison has ob- 

 served the distribution of coarse gravel to be generally such as implied 

 local action of water from the N.W. to the S.E., or down the slopes of 

 the rocks, as they decline from the principal axes of elevation which run 

 N.E. and S.W., and in the arrangement of the boulders of Cumbrian 

 rocks which pass in a long line of drift through Lancashire and Cheshire 

 to the plains of Shrewsbury and the Vale of the Severn, he found reason 

 to conclude that between the Mersey and the Bristol Channel the waters 

 of the ocean had flowed in a strait, and there had distributed the de- 

 tritus. This strait must have existed in a comparatively recent geolo- 

 gical period, since the remains of many marine moUusca now living 

 on the shores of England abound in some of the gravelly deposits on 

 the line of what is presumed to have been a former channel of the 

 ocean. In accounting for the position of the great boulders, coarse 

 gravel and sea-shells, found at different heights, the author expressed 

 his belief that they were all accumulated under the sea, and converted 

 into dry land by movements of elevation of unequal intensity. — See Ab- 

 stracts of the Geological Society's Proceedings. 



On the Bone Cave in Carboniferous Limestone at Cefn in Denbighshire. 

 By J. E. Bowman. 



The author, referring to a memoir by the Rev. Edw. Stanley in the 

 Edinb. New Phil. Journal for Jan. 1833, and to a ground plan which 

 accompanies it, gives the following description of the present state of 

 the cave. The recent excavations have been carried on in the main 

 cave about 25 feet beyond D, and as far in the inner lateral fissure, 

 commencing at 6*. The floor has also been sunk 3 to 4 feet along its 

 whole extent by the removal of an immense quantity of diluvium and 

 bone earth, and is now on a level with the entrance. Holes have been 

 dug in several places down to the solid rock, which was very uneven 

 and free from stalagmite in every instance. 



A perpendicular section of the intruded matter, as now laid bare at 

 the inner extremity of the main cave, exhibits the following appearance, 

 commencing about 18 inches below the roof: — A series of innumerable 

 thin beds of impalpable silt, some reddish, and irregularly alternating 

 with others of different shades of pale ochre, slightly micaceous, the 



* All the references are to Mr. Stanley's ground plan. 





