TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 581 



MONDAY, AUGUST ZQ. 



The following Papers were read : — 

 \. On a Raised Beach in Bhos Sili Bay, Gower. By Professor Peestwich, 



M.A., F.B.S. 



The author called attention to this as a remarkably fine instance of a raised beach 

 having some pecidiar and unusual features. It extends the whole length of the 

 cliif in Rhos Sili Bay, facing the bay for a distance of li miles. The top of the 

 cliff consists of angidar rubble of Old Red Sandstone, sometimes showing traces of 

 rough stratification, and varying in thickness from 20 to 60 feet, overlying a beach 

 5 to 8 feet thick, consisting of well-rounded pebbles of various local, carboniferous 

 and other rocks, and containing in places many Turntella communis, with a few 

 Nassa incrassata, whereas in the more exposed raised beach at Mewslade before 

 described by the author, the shells were Patella vulgata, Littorina (2 spec.) and 

 Purpura lapillus. Under the beach, which is 8 to 12 feet above the present sea- 

 level, there is another rubble of Old Red Sandstone fragments, with in one place 

 blocks of a quartzose conglomerate, without stratification. Its thickness is not 

 known. The author considered the upper rubble to have been washed down from 

 the red sandstone hills which rise behind the beach by the water as the land rose 

 after submergence, as described in the next paper, while to the lower bed of rubble 

 he woidd ascribe a glacial origia. 



2. On the Geological Evidence of the temporary Submergence of the South- 

 west of Europe during the early Human Period. By Professor Peestwich, 

 M.A., F.B.S. 



The author stated that, in the long course of investigation of the Quaternary Beds 

 in which he had been engaged, after referring the greater part of these beds to old 

 river, sea, or glacial action, there remained a residual set of phenomena which, 

 could not be accounted for by any of these agencies. In few cases were these re- 

 sidual drifts of any stratigraphical importance, and in character and structure 

 they differed greatly. They had been referred to various causes and to various 

 times, but he thought they were aU due to a common cause, that being the tem- 

 porary submergence of the land after the formation of the latest of the river gravels, 

 and after palaeolithic man had spread over Europe and the greater part of England. 



The submergence having been extremely slow and only temporary, while it is 

 supposed that the emergence took place with greater rapidity and by intermittent 

 movements, the effects of such changes lie as much in their denuding action on 

 loose materials as in the formation of any deposits. The latter, in fact, are com- 

 paratively insignificant. They include, besides the ' Warp ' of Trimmer, the ' Trail ' 

 of Fisher and the 'Head' of Godwin-Austen, and a series of loam and gravel 

 beds of greater dimensions. These various drifts all have certain featiu-es in 

 common. They are at their first origin always angular, they have their origin in 

 the adjacent vaUey or hUls, and are therefore entirely local, and they contain nothing 

 but the debris of a ten-estrial surface. The author showed that such deposits coidd 

 not be referred either to river or marine action, or to raia-wash, snow or ice, and 

 he gave reasons to show that they were in all probability the residt of this diluvial 

 action. 



The author relied greatly on the evidence of the angidar rubble {Head), over- 

 lying the raised beaches on both sides of the Chamiel, in which remains of the 

 mammoth, rhinoceros, and other quaternary animals were not unfrequently foimd, 

 and he further showed that in some instances paleeolithicjlint implements had been 

 foimd in the same beds. In river valleys the same diluvial beds overlaid valley 

 deposits with flmt implements. 



The author supposes that by this submergence 2ia^<solithic man was removed, 

 at aU events from all the lower lands, and the great extinct mammalia destroyed ; 

 and that the great superficial bed of gravel occupying the centre of our valleys, 

 and which is the result of the final ofi-flow of the waters, defines and limits the 



