44 Reports and Proceedings. 



300 feet above the sea-level, and shows some laminated sands with 

 seams of shingle, overlying coarse flint-shingle with a few whole 

 flints, which the author regarded as a westward continuation of the 

 old sea-beach, which has been traced from Brighton, past Chichester 

 to Bourne Common. A flint flake was found by the author at the 

 bottom of the superficial soil in this pit. The author also noticed 

 the occurrence of a flint implement of the type of those of St. 

 Acheul in gravel near Downton in Hampshire. This gravel capped 

 a small chalk-pit, and its elevation above the river Avon was about 

 150 feet. Two gravel-terraces occur between this pit and the river, 

 — one 40-60, the other 80-110 feet above the level of the latter. 



Discussion. — Mr. Codrington stated that, according to the Ordnance Survey, the 

 level of the pit at Cams "Wood was not more than 100 feet above the sea, so that it 

 was at about the same level as the gravels of Titchfield and elsewhere. • 



Mr. Evans remarked that the flint flake from Cams "Wood presented no characters 

 such as would prove it to be of Paleolithic age. He was, on the contrary, inclined 

 to regard it as having been derived from the surface. He commented on the height 

 at which the Downton implement had been discovered, which was, however, not so 

 ' great but that the containing gravels might be of fluviatile origin. 



Mr. Gwyn Jefi"reys thought that if the beds at Cams Wood were marine, some 

 testaceous remains might be found in them. If these were absent, he should rather 

 be inclined to regard them as fluviatile. 



Mr. J. W. Flower contended that the gravel at Downton could not be of fluviatile 

 origin. He thought indeed that the gravel was actually at a higher level than the 

 present source of the river. If this were so, he maintained that the transport of the 

 gravel by fluviatile action was impossible. He further observed that gravels pre- 

 cisely similar, also containing implements, had now been found, as well in the Hamp- 

 shire area as elsewhere, the transport of which, in his view, could not possibly be 

 attributed to any existing rivers. At Southampton they occur 150 feet above the 

 river Itchen and the sea, and considerably inland; at Bournemouth, ona sea-cliif 120 

 feet in height; and at the Foreland (at the eastern extremity of the Isle of Wight), 

 on a cliff 82 feet above the sea, and far remote from any river. If, therefore, these 

 deposits were efi'ected by fluviatile agency, it was evident that all traces of the rivers 

 were afterwards efi'aced by some great geological changes, or, in the alternative, some 

 great geological change, not fluviatile, mast have caused the deposit. Upon the 

 whole he was disposed to conclude with the French geologists, as well as with many 

 eminent English authors, that the accumulation of all these superficial drifts was, 

 as the late Sir Roderick Murchison had said, sudden and tumultuous, not of long 

 continuance ; and thus it was such as would result from some kind of diluvial action, 

 rather than from the ordinary long-continued action of water. 



Mr. Judd pointed out, in contravention of Mr. Jefi'reys's views, that in the Fen 

 district, over large tracts of deposits of imdoubtedly marine origin, not a trace of 

 marine shells could be found. 



Mr. Prestwich, while willing to concede that the implement-bearing gravel-beds 

 had been deposited under more tumultuous action than that due to rivers of the 

 present day, was still forced to attribute the excavation of the existing valleys and 

 the formation of terraces along their slopes to river-action. He showed that Mr. 

 Flower's argument as to the present level of the som'ce of the river was of no 

 weight, as the country in which it had its source was formerly, as now, at a much higher 

 level than the gravel at Downton. As to the absence of marine shells at Cams Wood, 

 he cited a raised beach in Cornwall which, in company with Mr. Jeffreys, he had 

 examined for a mile without finding a trace of a shell, though for the next half mile 

 they abounded. There was the same difference between the raised beach at Brighton 

 and at Chichester. He was obliged to Mr. Codrington for his correction as to the 

 level at Cams Wood, though the pit was at a higher elevation than the one to which 

 Mr. Codrington had alluded. 



2. " On some undescribed Fossils from the ' Menevian Group of 

 Wales.' " By Henry Hicks, Esq., F.G.S. 



