THE 



GEOLOaiCAL MAGAZINE. 



No. XXXI.— JANTJARY, 1867. 



I. — On an Old Lake-basin in Shkopshirb. 

 By Miss Eyton. 



THE district known as the Wealdmoors of Salop is an ancient 

 lake-basin about seven miles in length, by four in width. It 

 lies east of the Wrekin, from which the ground slopes gradually 

 down to it. On the S.E., the high ground of Lilleshall, and its 

 vicinity, rises more abruptly, and on the N.E. extremity it is 

 intersected by the river Tern, which probably formed the principal 

 outlet. The centre of the basin is filled with peat, containing 

 remains of oak and hazel trees, very much decayed, and matted 

 together by thick layers of fibrous roots, and in the lower part, by a 

 species of moss, of which the fibre is too fine for the Sphagnum, but 

 which it is impossible to identify, on account of its decayed condition. 

 This peat attaias a thickness of about six feet. Some years ago, a 

 bronze celt of fine workmanship, and which is considered to have 

 been manufactured since the commencement of the iron age, was 

 found imbedded in it. 



I have already said that the lower part of the basin, from 

 Crudgington to Bigwood quarry, a distance of about three-quarters 

 of a mile, is intersected by the river Tern. At Crudgington, on the 

 right-hand bank of the river, and at about one hundred yards 

 distance from it, is an extensive deposit of low level gravel, which 

 was opened by the Market Drayton Eailway Company, but which, 

 after being disturbed to the depth of about ten feet, is now closed. 

 This bed contains three layers, thus, — fine gravel mixed with red sand, 

 about 2ft. ; larger pebbles, with yellowish sand, about 2ft. 6in., or 

 3ft. ; pebbles and sand, with claj^ depth unknown. This gravel is 

 composed of very mixed materials. Pebbles of granite, quartz, flint, 

 and greenstone, are numerous, as well as fragments of the neigh- 

 bouring Eed Sandstone, and, occasionally, rolled lignite. A granite 

 boulder, several tons in weight, was quarried from it. It is not 

 likely that a small sluggish river like the Tern, even in its older 

 and more powerful days, could have brought together, all tliese 

 different materials ; but upon the hypothesis of a lake, receiving 

 supplies from various sources, and with its waters tending towards 



VOL. IV. NO. XXXI. 1 



