262 MALVERN DRIFT. [1875. 



read with interest. In it reference is made to a visit 

 paid to the Rev. W. S. Symonds at Pendock Rectory. 



J. Prestwich to Rev. W. S. Symonds. OXFORD, 16th July 1875. 



MY DEAR MR SYMONDS, You asked me to give you some 

 idea of what my views were of the Drift phenomena you so 

 kindly guided me to on Monday and Tuesday last. 



I told you on the spot what generally they were, and I have 

 little to add to the conclusions I then came to. In case, however, 

 I did not clearly express myself, and to avail myself of the use 

 of diagrams, I will now briefly state my views, so far as I can at 

 present form them. To commence with the last section, which 

 is a very instructive one, I think we there have the only instance 

 I saw in the Malverns of old river action of the same age prob- 

 ably as the great river drifts of the Severn and Avon, but of a 

 more torrential and mountain-stream character. The stream in 

 its floods carried down the bodies of the drowned animals and 

 transported large quantities of gravel, while on the breaking up 

 of the winter frosts the side-ice of the stream took up and 

 carried down angular blocks of the rocks higher up. We thus 

 have mixed together rolled and rounded gravel and sand, and 

 perfectly angular blocks, together with detached and fragmentary 

 bones of mammalia. This gravel is overlain by a drift of angu- 

 lar local debris derived from the Wenlock rocks on the ridge 

 above. See Section No. 1, which shows the probable relation of 

 the different points. 



Section No. 2 shows the probable relation of the gravel to 

 the valley and old river. There may be more than one terrace. 



The other mammalian deposits had clearly no relation to old 

 rivers, for the two chief ones were on the eastern slope of the 

 Malverns at places where the ridge was continuous and no 

 streams or valleys debouched. From the limited localisation and 

 great abundance of the bones, it would seem that the carcasses of 

 many animals may have been drifted to those spots ; and, in the 

 absence of evidence of river-action, we must suppose them to 

 have been drowned by the encroachment of the sea on the land. 

 Now this may have taken place at the time of the northern drift, 

 and the deposit of sea-shells in the Severn valley ; but, from the 



