22 IN'TEEGLACIAL BEDS OP THE ISLE OF AYIGHT, ETC. [Feb. I912, 



gravel and the Tertiary sand, which looks very much like the 

 result of ice-work. The sand itself also, in the opinion of several 

 geologists who have seen it, presents so irregular a surface as to 

 suggest that it was frozen hard before the gravel was deposited 

 upon it. 



The Eev. E. C. Spicer drew attention to an exposure near 

 Carisbrooke, where the gravels lie upon the upturned edges of the 

 Tertiary beds. The whole mass of gravel, while creeping down hill 

 by ' solifluction,' had dragged over the tops of the vertical Tertiary 

 beds into carves. There was evidence in the gravels themselves of 

 this mass-movement in their curving lines of stratification. All the 

 stratification of these gravels might perhaps be associated with this 

 kind of mass-drag. An interesting point in connexion with the 

 Author's diagram of crustal movements might be found in the gravels 

 above Shide, where the exposures showed a thickness of many feet 

 of perfectly clean flint-gravel resting immediately upon a thick 

 section of dark iron-stained gravel on the top of which was 

 evidence of peaty deposit. A gravel sheet would be formed during 

 the Interglacial submergence, uplifted by the post-Glacial elevation, 

 covered with soil and heath, producing in the stagnant water 

 hydrated iron-oxide which stained the mass. When this sub- 

 sequently sank, the clean gravel would be deposited upon it. The 

 whole would then be raised to its present position, showing in 

 section the clean gravel resting upon the stained, while the pinching 

 and contortion of the Chalk on which it rests may be explained 

 by the mass-flow of the gravel, making ice-action an unnecessary 

 explanation. 



The AuTHOE, in reply to a question put by Mr. Whitaker, stated 

 that he considered that the streams descending from the north of 

 Hampshire into Southampton Water and Spithead ultimately en- 

 tered the English Channel River and formed one of its tributaries 

 (as did also other rivers flowing from the South of England), and, with 

 the Seine from Prance, produced a large river at its entrance into 

 the ocean where it crossed the margin of the Continental Platform 

 due south of Land's End. 



