ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ivii 



Mr. E. Hull has given us an interesting paper " On the Physical 

 Geography and the Drift Phsenomena of the Cotteswold Hills/' in 

 which he has endeavoured to account for the formation of the valleys 

 and intervening headlands in the Gloucester plain, hy showing that 

 the valleys occur in the direction of slight anticlinal lines and the 

 headlands in the direction of synclinal lines having a mean north and 

 south strike. The preservation of Bredon Hill is attributed by the 

 author to a fault traversing the southern side of the hill from east 

 to west. In the second portion of his paper, Mr. Hull points out the 

 existence of several distinct pleistocene deposits, found at intervals 

 over this district. Of these the most ancient is the northern drift, 

 then the estuarine, and last the warp-drift ; of the first no traces 

 are to be found on the Cotteswold Hills, which were above the sea 

 at the period of its deposition ; but the sands and gravels of which 

 it is composed, derived from the waste of the new red sandstone 

 and carboniferous limestone, are plentifully strewed over the vales 

 of Gloucester and Moreton. The occurrence of boulders of millstone- 

 grit near the southern extremity of the Moreton Valley, is supposed 

 by the author to indicate the southern extension of icebergs brought 

 down by the northern current. The estuarine drift, composed of 

 oolitic detritus and restratified northern drift, was found in the 

 Valleys of the Evenlode, Moreton, Cheltenham, and Stroud, containing 

 the remains of now extinct Mammalia. The warp-drift was found 

 at the height of 600 or 700 feet, equal to that which the northern 

 drift attains, while the estuarine drift is not found at a higher eleva- 

 tion than 300 feet above the sea. Traces of an ancient sea-beach 

 were also found by the author at the base of the inferior oolite 

 escarpment. It was also stated in conclusion, that in order to explain 

 all the phsenomena of the drifts and denudations of the country, at 

 least three elevations and two submersions of greater or less amount 

 must be supposed to have taken place. 



Some interesting discussions on the Newer Tertiary Deposits of the 

 Sussex Coast have also occupiedour attention at the Evening Meetings. 

 Mr. Godwin-Austen and Mr. Martin of Pulborough have each con- 

 tributed some additions to our knowledge on this subject. Mr. 

 Godwin-Austen fully described several of these beds, which he 

 considers as the glacial deposits of the district. They consist of 

 gravels of different kind, overlaid by brick-earth somewhat variable 

 in its characters. At Selsea, where the glacial deposits are 25 feet 

 thick, the underlying eocene clay is seen at low water perforated by 

 a large variety of Pholas crispata ?, and overlaid by a deposit con- 

 taining Lutraria rugosa, Pullastra aurea. Tapes decussata, and Pecten 

 polymorphus, contemporaneous with the Pkolades. This deposit, 

 clayey in places, contains a great variety of pebbles and boulders of 

 granitic, slaty, and old fossiliferous rocks, such as are now found in 

 the Cotentin and Channel Islands. The occurrence of these granitic 

 and slaty blocks in the yellow clay was the principal subject of the 

 paper. The author pointed out the difficulties that lie in the way 

 of supposing that they were derived from the coast of Cornwall or 

 direct from the shores of Brittany or the Channel Islands, and 



