464 MR. E. D. OLDHAM ON THE [Aug. 1 894, 



distance. Mr. Wickham King has for several years been carefully 

 searching the various exposures, and making a collection of the 

 various rocks of which the breccia is composed. His results have 

 in part been published, 1 and a further contribution being in pre- 

 paration I shall not attempt to deal with this aspect of the deposits. 



Leaving this line of investigation, and coming to my own observa- 

 tions, tbe breccias, wherever they are exposed, are composed of more 

 or less, but never very much waterworn, sub-angular fragments of 

 various sizes; the deposit is always rudely stratified, the various 

 beds generally shading off into each other and not continuing as a 

 rule for any great distance. On Abberley Hill, where the breccia has 

 a coarser grain than any other exposure that I saw, there is a bed of 

 red sand interstratified with the breccia near the upper limit of the 

 quarry, and the material bears evident traces of having been re- 

 arranged by running water, but none of having been deposited in a 

 tranquil sea. 2 



A comparison of the various exposures throws some light on the 

 direction of travel of the included fragments. Church Hill is some 

 (5 miles west of Abberley, and is mentioned by Sir A. C. Ramsay 3 

 as a locality where the stones are unusually angular and broken, and 

 the breccia contains large boulders ; since his time, however, a large 

 quarry, opened in this hill, has shown that this is not the case. 

 Not only did we fail to find any block exceeding a cubic foot in 

 bulk, and only a very few at all approaching this size, but there is 

 a very large proportion of sand and fine gravel (less than an inch 

 in diameter) ; and the smaller fragments are all considerably water- 

 worn, though still imperfectly rounded. At Abberley, on the con- 

 trary, there is a very much smaller proportion of fine gravel, and 

 large blocks over a foot across are fairly numerous, the largest block 

 at present to be seen measuring 2' 7" X 1' 5" x 1' 5". On the Clent 

 Hills there is the same contrast between the south and north ends : 

 to the south large blocks are numerous, to the north the rock be- 

 comes finer-grained and the constituent fragments more waterworn. 



The rock in fact, whether we regard each exposure separately, 

 or the relation of one to another, exhibits all those characteristics 

 which may now be seen in the great gravel-fans that are found 

 everywhere along the foot of the hill-ranges of the drier parts of 

 Western and Central Asia. 4 They form a continuous fringe along 

 the foot of the hills, often extending many miles over the plains ; 

 at their upper end they are mostly composed of large fragments, the 

 interstices being filled with small gravel and sand, but farther from 

 the hills the larger fragments are for the most part left behind and 

 the general texture of the deposit is finer. The pebbles, even to the 

 outermost limit, generally remain imperfectly rounded, for when the 



1 ' Midland Naturalist,' vol. xvi. (1893) pp. 25-37. 



2 Two very good photographic views of the breccia are given in Mr. Wickham 

 King's paper, op. supra cit. 



3 Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xi. (1855) p. 193. 



4 Those of Persia have been described by l)r. W. T. Blanford, F.E.S., Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxix. (1873) pp. 496, 498. 





