An yEolian Deposit at Clevedon. 371 



side of the Bristol ridge looks down upon that great tract of alluvial 

 fen-land which, with a level of about 20 feet O.D., sweeps without 

 interruption to the foot-hills of the Mendips, and through their 

 gaps to Bridgwater and Glastonbury, no less than 24 miles away. 



The two ridges enclose a secluded hollow, 5 miles long, already 

 alluded to as the Vale of Gordano, whose romantically wooded sides 

 break here and there into crag. Save for half-a-niile at its south- 

 western end, it is floored by a tongue of the Severn-side alluvium, 

 whose surface is also at the 20 ft. level. But the upper end of this 

 Gordano Valley is altogether anomalous. The Bristol-to-Clevedon 

 ridge is abruptly breached by a huge craggy gap, which we may 

 call " East Clevedon Gap " (Fig. 1), whose visible floor is at hardly 

 more than 5 or 10 feet above the level of the great alluvia, while its 

 rock-floor, buried under the superficial deposits which are our present 

 subject, may be at or even below sea-level. Thus the Vale of 

 Gordano, just where a cirque of heights appears about to close it in, 

 is suddenly laid almost as open to the south-west as it is to the 

 north-east. 



Distribution and Relations of the Deposits. 



The distribution and behaviour of these deposits is everywhere 

 conditioned strictly by the physiography (Figs. 1, 2). They cling, 

 to the southern flanks of both ridges, climbing up to 120 feet above 

 the sea. But in the Vale of Gordano and in East Clevedon Gap they 

 extend completely across the hollows, and climb up the opposite 

 sides as well. Against the crags they are (Fig. 3) banked 

 up thickly — more thickly on southward-facing than on northward- 

 facing crags. They are interrupted at gaps in the ridges. The little- 

 cave (Fig. 3) was filled with breccia to within 18 inches of the roof, 

 the breccia resting on some 8-10 inches of dull red stony loam or 

 cave-earth, which lay upon the rocky floor. The breccias and stony 

 sands are confined to the steep flanks of the hills ; but the sands and 

 loams are not in converse manner confined to the valley-floors, for 

 they rise up on to the hill-sides, interdigitating with the breccias. 

 At 50 or 60 yards from the crags the bands begin to rise at angles of 

 about 15°, the angle increasing till at the crag-side it is as high as 

 32° (Fig. 3). The surface in such places is also steep, though not 

 quite so steep owing to the upward thinning of the bands, and the 

 slope falls off rapidly. Its profile across the Vale of Gordano is 

 shown in Fig. 4, and is a highly characteristic curve. On the gentler 

 slopes and the valley-floors their base has not been seen, so that the 

 true thickness is unknown. The lowest level to which they have been 

 traced with certainty is about 30 feet O.D., but there is little doubt 

 that they pass under the great alluvia. 



Paleontology. 



Determinable fossils have been obtained only at Holly Lane and 

 Highdale Road. The vertebrate forms (see Reynolds, op. cit.) 



