412 
occupied by great accumulations of gravel and sand, agreeing in cha- 
racter with those in the neighbourhood of Basford. In the midst of 
the valley in which Basford is situated are lower ridges of hills, 
mostly ranging in the direction of the valley, and containing beds of 
gravel quite as thick (two to eight feet), and interspersed with boul- 
ders as large as those found in the hollows or lower parts. Mr. 
Bailey is of opinion that none of these deposits were accumulated by 
fluviatile action, or by any uniform agent operating during long pe- 
riods, but by a tumultuous commotion, when the surface of the earth 
was in a different state to that which now prevails with respect to 
hill and dale—the deposits being very unequal in thickness, con- 
torted in position, and composed of materials very irregularly asso- 
ciated as regards nature and size. The transport of the drift in one 
direction, the author says, appears to have been sometimes checked 
by arush from an opposite point, by which means the materials were 
forced into ridges having an axis of loose sand. Some of these 
ridges, he conceives, may have been produced by intermediate hol- — 
lows having been scooped out, and subsequently filled with gravel. 
Mr. Bailey does not offer any positive opinion respecting the di- 
rection by which the detritus arrived at its present situation, but he 
thinks it could not have been transported from the S. or 8.E., as it 
contains no pebbles of Charnwood and Mount Sorrel sienite, or of 
lias or lias-fossils, or of gypsum ; nor from any point between S.W. 
and N.W.., on account of the absence of mountain-limestone pebbles, 
and as the fragments of chert which it contains differ from the chert 
of the Derbyshire strata. Had the drift come from the west, he 
states, 1t ought to contain detritus from the coal-fields which occupy 
the whole district between Basford and the Derbyshire limestone 
hills, whereas he has found only one or two small pieces of what 
might be called jet. He has also never obtained any specimens of 
magnesian limestone, though that formation occupies almost the 
whole country to the north-west and north. Mr. Bailey therefore 
suggests, that the gravel was drifted from a district between the 
north and east points. 
The mass of these deposits consists of fragments of coarse quartz- 
ose rock, frequently tinged in a great variety of ways. Many of 
the pebbles of sandstone are traversed by white veins which project 
above the general surface: other specimens are rolled portions of 
quartzose conglomerates, and the greater part of the materials com- 
posing them appear to have been much worn, before they were in- 
closed in the cement; but some of the fragments have sustained very 
little abrasion by removal from their native bed, preserving all the 
sharpness of recent fractures. Small masses of iron-ore are not of 
unfrequent occurrence. Mr. Bailey has seen only one specimen of 
mica-slate. Many fragments of trap are found in these deposits and 
some of them are of considerable size, constituting the largest blocks 
in the deposit, and sometimes weighing two or three hundred pounds ; 
they are often much worn as well as decomposed on the surface. 
Fragments of porphyry likewise are not rarely met with; and masses 
