484 Dr. C. Callaway — Superficial Deposits N. Shropshire. 



At Shrewsbury a large pit on the Severn displays marine Bands 

 and gravels of a normal type. They rest on Permian, and are 

 overlain by Boulder-clay. A mile or so north of Shrewsbury, near 

 Almond Park, the shingle is very coarse, rounded fragments up 

 to one foot in diameter being common. Flints are not so abundant 

 as they are further east, which is difficult to account for if they 

 were derived from Antrim. 



A good exposure of gravel is seen near Welshampton, not far 

 from the northern border of the county, and is overlain by clay 

 with boulders ; but it is needless to multiply descriptions of sections 

 which present so many features in common. 



I may remark in passing that I have never found clay under the 

 sands and gravels of Shropshire. Wherever the two formations are 

 seen together, the clay is always uppermost. Strictty speaking, the 

 latter ought not to be described as a clay at all. I have selected 

 specimens of the stiffest material, and triturated them with water 

 in a tall narrow glass, with the result that at least two-thirds of this 

 so-called clay is seen to consist of sand. 



I have already thrown doubt upon the alleged derivation of the 

 Chalk flints from Antrim, and should be disposed to refer them 

 to an eastern source. This suggestion receives confirmation from 

 an interesting discovery made some years ago in Wellington. 

 Gravels were being excavated within 100 yards of my house, when 

 the workmen found at a few feet below the surface a perfect 

 specimen of Waldheimia obovata. This is a well-known Cornbrash 

 fossil, and must have been conveyed by currents from the south 

 or east. 



There is one fact which seems to me absolute!} 7 fatal to the views 

 of the advocates of the action of land-ice in Shropshire, and that 

 is the entire absence of the rounding and smoothing ordinarily 

 produced in glaciated districts. I have been working for over 

 twenty years in the county, yet I have never found a roclie moutomiee. 

 Glacial sands and gravels are found up to nearly the summit 

 of Grinshill Hill, and a boulder of Eskdale granite can be seen 

 on the Longmj'nd Hills at a height of 1050 feet. The glacier that 

 deposited this boulder, as the land-ice advocates believe, must 

 therefore have entirely submerged Grinshill Hill ; yet that elevation 

 is strikingly conspicuous for its angularity. If it be thought that 

 the water-stones of the Keuper were not hard enough to retain 

 a rounded contour, what is to be said for Lilleshall Hill ? It stands 

 but slightly above the plain of North Shropshire, and its summit 

 is composed of an extremely hard and flinty felspathic ash ; yet the 

 surmounting crags are exceptionally rough and angular. But 

 the time would fail me to tell of Charlton Hill, of Primrose Hill, 

 of the lower slopes of the Caer Caradoc chain and the Longmynd, 

 and of countless crags and elevations which would certainly have 

 retained hundreds of proofs of glaciation had an ice-sheet ever passed 

 over them. 



