BEACHES, ETC., OF THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND. 303 



mouth of the Somme at St. Yalery, at which place this gravel is 

 about 105 feet above sea-level. The absence of large rivers, the 

 encroachment of the sea, and other circumstances to be hereafter 

 mentioned, have interfered with the exhibition of any equally 

 illustrative case on our own south coast. 



At the Isle of Thanet the sea has encroached so much that if 

 there had been any Raised Beaches they must have been destroyed. 

 It is so also along the Walmer and Dover coasts, though at both 

 places there are remains of a Head of rubbly chalk at a level which 

 would indicate that the shore-line was not far distant. The 

 "Wealden rivers are obscured at their embouchure by the large 

 accumulation of recent shingle. On the Sussex coast, the flat 

 ground through which the rivers pass conceals their relation with 

 the coast-sections, and on the Hampshire coast the distinctive levels 

 of the valley-beds, well exhibited in the Avon Valley at and around 

 Salisbury, are lost after passing Ringwood. The streams which 

 flow into the Southampton Water have equally indefinite banks. 



On the coast of Devon and Cornwall, the Valley Drifts have not 

 yet been well-defined, but we shall have other evidence to otfer 

 respecting the age of the Raised Beaches there. In the valley of 

 the Severn, there are too many links wanting to establish with 

 sufficient certainty the relation of the Raised Beaches of Weston- 

 super-Mare and Woodspring with the Pleistocene fiuviatile beds of 

 the valley of the Severn and its tributaries. In the absence 

 of marine terraces in the main valley, we may, however, take the 

 fiuviatile beds of the tributary valleys as guides to the then 

 sea-levels. Thus, as before mentioned, the low-level fossiliferous 

 drift of the Stroud Valley where it debouches into the valley of the 

 Severn corresponds very well with what should have been the 

 level of the old estuary, as does the level of the Cropthorne bed 

 at the junction of the Avon with the Severn Valley,^ while the 

 marine beds at Kempsey and Upton would tally with the Raised 

 Beaches of Weston and Woodspring. 



On the Welsh coast, the absence of broad valleys with fiuviatile 

 deposits leaves a blank in the terms of comparison. 



On the whole, especially looking at the Meuchecourt section, we 

 may conclude that the Raised Beaches of the English and Bristol 

 Channels are on the same geological horizon as the lower old 

 river-drifts of the Thames and Somme Valleys, and belong to one of 

 the latest phases of the post-Glacial, or, more properly, of the later 

 Glacial period. 



Discussion. 



The President thought the Fellows were to be congratulated that 

 the father of the Society should still continue to furnish them with 

 such papers as that to which they had listened — so full of careful 

 observation, ranging over so wide an area, and raising so many 



^ Strickland's Memoirs, • Geology of the Vale of Evesham,' p. 96. 



