VOL. XVII. (3) SEVERN PLAIN IN GLACIAL EPOCH 371 



prevailing colour is light brown or red ; the grains are small 

 and often rounded and are much finer than most of the sand 

 forming part of the deposits near the Severn. 



The sands contain no Drift pebbles or erratics, and are 

 generally mingled with varying proportions of angular and 

 sub-angular Jurassic gravel, showing in many places a rough 

 horizontal stratification. Lenticular beds of fine clay also 

 occur in a few instances, as at Sandy Lane, Charlton Kings. 



At Mickleton, the bed of sand is about 12 feet thick, and 

 lies at an elevation of about 230 feet O.D.' Other beds have 

 been observed at Broadway, Little Washbourn, Alderton, Beck- 

 ford, Bishop's Cleeve, Cheltenham, Shurdington, Fairmile, 

 Hucclecote, Barn wood, Upton St. Leonards, and Wotton, and 

 to the north of Hempstead. 



From Charlton Kings the Sands extend to some distance 

 up the Valley of the Chelt. Near the " Duke of York Inn " 

 there is a definite bed at about 270 feet O.D. ; but in a pit 

 near Coxhorne at 300 feet O.D. the sand occurs only in thin 

 seams and small pockets in the Jurassic gravel. Thence the 

 sand gradually thins out ; and it is found sparingly mixed 

 with the gravel at the Dowdeswell Reservoirs, at a height of 

 about 370 feet O.D. I have not observed any of the Chelten- 

 ham Sands in the Valley around Winchcomb — a fact difficult 

 to explain, if the current that brought them flowed from the 

 north towards which point the Winchcomb Valley opens. It 

 is possible, however, that floods from melting-ice and snow on 

 the Cleeve Plateau have removed them. 



Strickland refers the Cheltenham Sands to a marine 

 origin. Against this hypothesis or the suggestion that they 

 were deposited in a lake, is the lack of any Post-Jurassic shell 

 therein to indicate the long-continued occupation of this part 

 of the Severn Plain by marine or lacustrine waters. The only 

 organisms that occur in the sand, with the exception of water- 

 worn Jurassic fossils, consist of numerous minute fragments 

 of shells, too small for identification, in the sand-bed on the 

 north of the Tewkesbury Road Railway Bridge, Cheltenham. 



I I have to thank Mr. J. M. Dixon, for particulars of this deposit and for kind assistance in 

 my work in the North Cotteswolds. 



