Miss Eyton — Newer Deposits of North Shropshire. 109 



thin bed of rather coarse gravel mixed with sand. I have seen 

 a similar hut still coarser gravel resting upon fine sand, in a newly- 

 opened gravel-pit belonging to W. Moylcy, Esq., near Buildwas, in 

 the Severn Valley. There I only obtained a few fragments of 

 C'l/prina Islandica and 2'ellina solidula, but the Wellington deposit, 

 besides these and other bivalves, is, notwithstanding the roughness of 

 the material, the best place I know of for small and delicate uni- 

 valves. It seems as if their minute size enabled them to lie more 

 safely concealed in the interstices of the gravel, and better to resist 

 the grinding process to which they have been subjected. This gravel 

 is only seen in one place — on the right-hand side of the Haygate-road, 

 west of the town of Wellington. I have to thank Mr. D. Jones for 

 drawing my attention to it. About a mile and a half to the east of the 

 town, extending for some distance on either side of Ketley Brook, there 

 occurs another bed of sand and gravel, resting upon clay, containing 

 the same materials, with a much larger proportion of sand, and most 

 of the commoner species of shells belonging to these drifts. Accord- 

 ing to a level taken from the top of the Wrekin to the Severn at 

 Coalport, Ketley Brook is 190 ft. above the latter with 6 ft. water ; 

 and this, I think, will be very nearly the base of the range of 

 altitude at which the shell-bearing gravels are found, as the next- 

 mentioned bed will give an approximation to their greatest elevation 

 in Shropshire above the present sea-level. This bed lies nearly five 

 miles to the north-east, at Lilleshall, in a field belonging to the New 

 Lodge Farm. It assumes a mound-like, rounded contour, and rests 

 against the Permian sandstone. It contains, I believe, all the 

 materials above enumerated. Mr. 0. J. Woodward, Curator of the 

 Birmingham Museum, has described this deposit, in a paper read 

 before the British Association at Birmingham,^ and I have to thank 

 Mr. Henry Woodward for pointing out his communication to me, and 

 also for his kind assistance in naming some of my specimens. Mr. 

 C. J. Woodward states the summit of the mound to be 463 ft. above 

 mean sea-level. 



Although these beds are only visible in places, and sometimes 

 assume locally the form of mounds, they are, in reality, portions of 

 terraces of which the intervening parts have either been denuded or 

 are concealed by overlying beds. The latter is the case at Orleton, 

 less than a mile to the west of the gravel -bed in Haj'gate-road, Wel- 

 lington, where a bed of sand and gravel, containing shells, was cut 

 through in making a drive, many years ago, and is now grown over. 

 The same bed was found at Hadley, lying between Ketley and 

 Lilleshall, where, in digging the foundation of the church in 1854:, 

 specimens of Turritella communis and Tellina solidula were procured. 

 They are, in fact, raised beaches, as well marked in all their chief 

 characteristics as any recent beach ; and in this they seem to differ 

 somewhat from deposits of the same age in Wexford and Norfolk, the 

 former of which are described as " occupying an area forty miles in. 

 length by from eight to nine miles in breadth." ^ 



With regard to the distribution of the shells found in these beds, 

 1 Brit. Assoc. Eep. 1866. 2 q^ol. Mag., Dec, 1869, p. 542. ' 



