GEOLOGY 
Ouse, and it is not until after the Lea leaves the county that there is 
any considerable sheet of alluvium in its valley. Alluvium is a silty 
deposit of sandy clay or peaty mud, in which there may be seams of 
gravel. It contains recent land and freshwater shells, sometimes bones 
of existing animals, and occasionally Neolithic flint implements. These 
are fairly common on both sides of the Lea from its source at Leagrave 
to its outflow in the Thames. Many such implements have been found 
in the county, but as they do not occur in regularly-stratified deposits, 
usually being found on the surface of the ground or just under the sur- 
face-soil, and occasionally in alluvium, their consideration rightly belongs 
to the domain of Pre-historic Archeology. 
EARLY NOTICES OF BEDFORDSHIRE GEOLOGY 
The earliest notices of the geology of Bedfordshire relate to strata 
of economic importance, to petrifying earth, and to mineral springs. The 
soil of the county was mentioned so early as 1615;° petrifying earth at 
‘ Aspley-Gowiz’ (Guise) near Woburn claimed much attention from the 
year 1660,” and the fullers’ earth of Woburn from the year 1662.’ In 
1680° it was stated that a gold mine had been discovered at ‘ Pollux 
Hill’ near Silsoe, and the statement was repeatedly copied, even being 
mentioned as a fact in Calvert’s Gold Rocks of Great Britain and Ireland 
(1853). Although the Society of Mines Royal seized the mine and 
granted a lease of it, the ‘ gold’ was merely flakes of mica in drifted 
stones occurring in a bed of gravel. On the Ordnance Map (old series) 
‘Gold Mine’ marks the position north-east of Pollox Hill in a field 
which is still called Gold Close. 
A petrifying spring at Barton was first mentioned in 1738 ;° mineral 
springs generally were frequently alluded to from the year 1808,’ some 
dozen localities for them being mentioned in various works ; and ferru- 
ginous water at Priestley Bog near Woburn was analyzed by Sir 
Humphrey Davy in 1813.” It is probably of the same origin as the 
mineral water of Flitwick Moor and somewhat similar in composition. 
The Totternhoe Stone seems to have been first described in 1820 ;° and 
although Professor Henslow called attention to the value of phosphatic 
nodules for manure in 1845, the ‘coprolites’ of Bedfordshire do not 
appear to have been noticed until 1866.” 
1 John Speed’s [Description of England and Wales): ‘Bedfordshire.’ (Without title-page or pagination.) 
? Childrey’s Britannia Baconica, p. 86. 
3 Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England, p. 114. 
* Abbot’s Essay on Metallic Works, p. 203. (Not seen ; referred to in Calvert’s Gold Rocks, p. 101, 
under the above date. See also p. 109, in which he gives a list of unauthenticated gold localities.) 
5 Atlas Geographicus, 1. 150. 
® Batchelor’s Agriculture of the County of Bedford, p. 15. 
7 Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, p. 291. = bbe 
8 E. Hanmer, ‘Letter describing the Totternhoe Stone,’ 4m. Phils. xvi. 59. (It was in this 
year that William Smith published his Geolgical Map of Bedfordshire, the earliest geological map of the 
county. S26 
Hf -_ P. B. Brodie, ‘On a Deposit of Phosphatic Nodules at Sandy in Bedfordshire’ ; Geol. Mag. 
iii. 153-5. (With analysis by Dr. Voelcker-) 
3! 
