Yol. 50.] PERMIAN BRECCIAS OF THE MIDLANDS. 465 



streams flow after rain they are generally so loaded with debris as 

 to be rather of the nature of fluid mud than water, and in this the 

 fragments of rock seem to be carried along en masse without being 

 worn against each other to the same extent as in a mountain 

 torrent. The stream, in fact, flowing over a surface of its own 

 formation, has developed such a slope and shape of bed that it is 

 only able to transport its burden, and has little or no surplus energy 

 to devote to the rounding of the rock-fragments. Another effect of 

 the large proportion of mud and stones moved by the streams is that 

 occasional large blocks travel in the moving mass, far beyond where 

 most of their fellows have been left behind ; occasional exceptional 

 floods too may bring down larger blocks than usual, which afterwards 

 get covered up by and embedded in gravels of much smaller grain. 



To such a cause I would ascribe the deposition of the Permian 

 breccias. That is to say, they were formed by the action of streams, 

 subaerially, and in the immediate proximity of the uplands from 

 which these streams drained. The deposit is too well bedded, and 

 the fragments are often too much waterworn, to be an actual talus, 

 or a landslip formation, extensive as these may sometimes be ; it is 

 not sufficiently regularly-bedded to be a marine deposit formed in a 

 tranquil sea, into which fragments of rock were dropped by floating 

 ice ; it does not exhibit any of those disturbances of bedding found 

 in the marine boulder-clays of Pleistocene age ; and the very local 

 character of the rudely defined strata, the way they pass into each 

 other, combined with the general regularity and parallelism of 

 bedding, seem to preclude the idea that they could have been 

 deposited in a turbulent sea without the agency of floating ice, or 

 formed by a debacle. There remains but the supposition that they 

 were formed subaerially, like the analogous deposits of recent gravel- 

 fans, and in this case the angularity or at most imperfect rounding 

 of the fragments precludes their being of any but local origin. 1 



Though the hypothesis of transport by floating ice must be 

 abandoned as an explanation of these deposits, in favour of a mode 

 of origin little understood when Sir Andrew Ramsay wrote his paper, 

 this in no way affects the question as to whether the stria tions seen 

 on some of the included fragments were produced by glaciers or not. 

 To this point I devoted some attention, and the results may, perhaps, 

 be not altogether unacceptable. 



The locality where striated stones are most abundant, and their 

 mode of occurrence best observable, is the quarry on Abbeiiey Hill. 

 This, and that on Church Hill, are the only two which are cut deep 

 enough to reach the unweathered portion of the deposit. Generally, 

 the quarries only take off the surface-skin of soft and weathered 

 material ; on Berrow Hill the quarry cuts a little deeper, and here, as 



1 The same conclusions, regarding the local origin of the materials of which 

 these breccias are composed, have been independently reached by previous 

 observers. See Beete Jukes, ' The South Staffordshire Coalfield,' Mem. Geol. 

 Surv. 2nd ed. (1859), p. 9, and Mr. Wickhaui King's more detailed researches, 

 as already quoted. 



