108 Miss Eyton — Newer Deposits of North Shropshire. 



We now come to the shell-bearing gravels, which are so well 

 developed in the Severn Valley and on the north and east of the 

 Wrekin chain, and which appear to correspond, with considerable 

 exactness, to the " manure gravels " of Wexford, and elsewhere in 

 Ireland, and the marine drifts of Wales and Lancashire, on the 

 western coast of Britain, and with those of Aberdeenshire, Caithness, 

 and the middle sands and gravels of Norfolk on the eastern. 



These gravels (I am speaking more especially of the beds on the 

 north and east of the Wrekin, with which I am best acquainted ; but 

 I believe the same facts apply generally to the Severn Valley) 

 contain a great variety of materials : Silurian, Carboniferous lime- 

 stone and Lias fossils, granite, both pink and grey, coal and lignite, 

 Permian sandstone and flints, enter into their composition.^ The 

 fragments are always rolled, except in the case of syenite and green- 

 stone, brought from the neighbouring hills, which are generally 

 angular. I do not think that any of the material is derived from the 

 local Triassic beds. Boulders of granite and dark-grey Silurian lime- 

 stone are common in association with these drifts, the latter some- 

 times veined with quartzite. The presence of these and of the 

 rolled pebbles of granite and Lias surely indicate a current from the 

 north, as the Lias must have been brought from the Cheshire border, 

 and the granite from Cumberland. The Silurian and Carboniferous 

 fossils may have been brought from Flintshire or Denbighshire, on 

 the north-west ; though it certainly seems more reasonable, at first 

 sight, to consider them as derived from the neighbouring beds of 

 South Shropshire, in which case it must have been a current, pro- 

 bably local, from that direction which bore them to their present 

 position. 



By far the richest locality in shells to be found in Shropshire is 

 the Severn Valley drift, exposed between the Union and the Welsh 

 bridge, above the quarry walk, Shrewsbury. Here is a large gravel- 

 pit, where the beds are seen to be composed of stratified sand and 

 gravel, layers of shell-sand occurring at intervals of two or three 

 feet, loaded with comminuted fragments, and frequently containing 

 perfect valves. The base is not seen. This deposit bears the 

 strongest resemblance in character to the description of the Wexford 

 manure gravels of any of the Shropshire drift-beds. The same 

 gravel appears in the cutting of the Shrewsbury and Wellington 

 Eailway, and also of the Shrewsbury and Hereford Eailway, south 

 of the Severn ; but I have never searched these localities for shells. 

 A bed of similar character occurs in a ploughed field above Brian- 

 hill turnpike, between Shrewsbury and Eaton Constantine ; indeed 

 the deposits seem continuous along the Severn Valley. The higher 

 part of the town of Wellington is built upon a bed of dark -red clay, 

 used for brickmaking, containing rounded pebbles of the usual 

 materials, but no shells, it corresponds, probably, to the clayey gravel 

 of Merrington-green. Against this, but not upon it, there rests a 



' It should be observed that although flints certainly occur sometimes in these beds, 

 north-east of the Wrekin, they are by no means a marked feature. Of the transported 

 rocks, grey granite is perhaps the most abundant. 



