282 Rev. W. 8. Symonds on Phenomena connected with 
Society of Worcester, “ On the Geology of the Railway from 
Worcester to Hereford,” and this address was afterwards 
published in the Edin. New Phil. Journal for April. Since 
the publication of my paper, I have enjoyed the opportunity 
of accompanying Mr Prestwich, a well known and distin- 
guished authority on the tertiary and post-pliocene deposits, 
to several of the most important localities for studying the 
drift phenomena in the Vale of Worcester; and I am now 
convinced that, in common with several other geologists, 
I have committed a serious error in my correlation of 
one of the most important of our drift deposits. I have 
also examined carefully, within the last few weeks,° the 
drifts of the Wye and Usk, which appear to me to furnish 
some important problems for the investigation of the geo- 
logist. | 
Alluvial Deposits—The first point we remark is the great 
difference which at present obtains in the deposition of silt and 
alluvium by such rivers as the Severn and Avon, compared 
with swift-flowing streams like the Wye and Usk, which have 
a fall of as much as 23 feet in a mile along their general 
course. In some localities, the Wye has shifted its course, 
filled up its former channel, and cut out a new bed, within 
the memory of man. Mr Charles Richardson, C.E., in his 
contribution to the Edinburgh New Phil. Journal, entitled 
“Chronological Remarks on the River Wye,”* mentions an 
instance of the shifting of the course of the Wye, as proved 
by an old map, which gives the position of the celebrated 
Ross Oak, now known as the Burnt Oak, and the river as it 
flowed a century and a-half ago. A broad surface of meadow 
land now sweeps where the Wye then flowed, and the river 
now runs some 70 or 80 yards from the former bank on 
which that old oak stood. Indeed, many of the old inhabitants 
of Ross lately assured me that the channel of the River Wye, 
near the town, has been very much changed since their own 
remembrance. ‘This, however, is not the case with respect to 
the smoothly-flowing Severn and sluggish Avon to anything 
like the same extent; for a Roman funeral urn, containing the 
ashes of the dead, has been found buried on the river banks, 
* Edin. New Phil. Journal, July 1857. 
