366 H. H. Howorth—A Great Post-Glacial Food. 
present sea.” The hypothetical inferences closing this extract are 
of course Mr. Binney’s, and I do not accept them, but I gladly quote 
the passage as showing that a veteran authority on these beds deemed 
them all to be on one horizon whether containing shells or barren. 
If we cross the Pennine Chain into Central England, we shall 
largely lose the great deposits of Boulder-clay that mark the mari- 
time districts west of the mountains, but we do not lose the gravels. 
The sheets of widely-spread barren gravel are conspicuous enough 
and familiar enough. The fact that the Boulder-clay is not always 
found associated with these gravels does not affect their geological 
horizon. For, as we have said, we deem them, when found with 
the clays, to be of a different origin and a different date from the 
clays. Here I very gladly quote and endorse most completely Mr. 
J. Geikie’s emphatic statement when he says, “In short, the flood- 
eravels of the Midland districts are precisely of the same origin as 
much of the gravelly drift that overlies the Upper (? Upper, H. H. H.) 
Boulder- -clay in the low grounds of Scotland and other glaciated 
regions” (Great Ice Age, pp. 584-5). 
The nature of these gravels has been well described by Mr. J. 
Geikie. He says: ‘“‘They are not confined to valley slopes, but 
sweep up and over hill-tops, valley-partings, and water-sheds ; 
extend across plateaux and platforms between separate valleys; and, 
in short, bear little or no relation to the present drainage-system of 
the country. It is not possible that these gravels could have been 
laid down by rivers in the process of deepening their valleys, their 
distribution and general appearance show that the surface had 
already received much of its present contour before the deposits 
were scattered broadcast over the country. I should mention that 
the deposits in question are frequently very coarse and rudely 
bedded. They often show a confused and tumbled appearance, con- 
sisting of sand, grit, angular debris and blocks, and well-rounded 
stones, promiscuously heaped and jumbled together, and, what is 
particularly noteworthy, many of the stones are often standing on 
end; and not lying in the position they might have been expected 
to assume had they been laid down by ordinary river action”’ (Pre- 
historic Europe, p. 140). 
Again, speaking of this gravel, he says, ‘“‘ No one has succeeded in 
showing how it could have been formed by the action of ordinary 
rivers. It sweeps up and over considerable hills and occurs on 
the tops of plateaux, and on the dividing ridges of separate river 
basins. Mr. Lucy has met with ‘ Northern drift’ at a height of up- 
wards of 600 feet above the sea among the'Cotteswolds. In fact, it 
is from the very circumstance that the gravels do occur in such 
anomalous positions that they received the name of hill gravels from 
Professor Phillips” (Great Ice Age, p. 864). The oravels we are 
talking of consist largely of foreign and transported elements. 
Professor Phillips more than 40 years ago wrote admirably about. 
them, and it would have been well if ier course of discussion upon 
them had followed the lines on which he worked, instead of these 
lines having been subject to almost complete denudation at the hands 
