[ 1^9 ] 

 XV. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from vol. xlvii. p. 576.] 



February 1st, 1899.— W. Whitaker, B.A., F.E.S., President, 

 in the Chair, 



THE following communications were read : — 

 1. ' Ou Badiolaria in Chert from Chypon's Farm, Mullion 

 District (Cornwall).' By Dr. G. J". Hinde, F.R.S., F.G.S. 



2. ' Gravel at Moreton-in-the-Marsh (Gloucestershire).' By S. S. 

 Buckman, Esq., F.G.S. 



The author describes certain gravels of Triassic debris and flints 

 at Moreton-in-tho-Marsh, with special reference to an upper bed 

 wherein the fragments are mostly in a vertical position, some of 

 them having their heavier ends uppermost. He theorizes that the 

 vertical materials were the droppings from melting ice floating 

 down a large river. This river, formed out of one or more of 

 original consequents of the Thames system, existed before the 

 valley of the Warwickshire Avon had been excavated. By one 

 branch, possibly the upper Trent, it drained the Pennine range ; by 

 another, possibly the upper Severn, the Welsh hills. Ice formed in 

 the upper waters — in these highlands — enclosing debris, and when 

 a thaw occurred, it floated down to the lower parts of the river. 

 The author notices certain flints obtained from the gravels. 

 Those from the upper bed are quite unabraded ; those from 

 the lower bed have their edges worn, and in some cases battered, 

 while sometimes they are peculiarly flaked as if artificially worked. 

 The author surmises that the date of the gravel, if formed by a 

 river-system as supposed, is Pliocene. 



3. ' On the Occurrence of Pebbles of Schorl-rock from the South- 

 west of England in the Drift-deposits of Southern and Eastern 

 England.' By A. E. Salter, Esq., B.Sc, F.G.S. 



A set of twelve representative specimens, consisting essentially of 

 quartz and tourmaline, have been looked over by Prof. Bonney, who 

 informs the author that they consist mainly of felspathic grits, 

 schorl-rock, etc., similar rocks to which occur in the South-west 

 of England. The most westerly point at which the pebbles have 

 been detected is on Great and Little Haldon Hills, 800 feet above 

 Ordnance datum, where they are of larger size, more abundant, and 

 coarser-grained than elsewhere. Thence they are traced to the 

 north and south sides of the Thames Basin, and into East Anglia at 

 Walton-on-the-Naze, Aldebnrgh, etc. There is a general decrease 

 in height in the deposit in which the pebbles occur, in passing from 

 west to east, and the pebbles appear to have taken two main 

 courses — one along a peneplain west to east from Dartmoor, the 

 other from south-west to north-east across England. The pebbles 

 are absent from the Weald and from the district around Bagshot, 

 from the Hampshire basin and its bounding hills (with the ex- 

 ception of the extreme south), and from the highest and presumably 

 oldest gravels north of the Thames. 



