7 6 



II. The lowland deposits consist of gravels, clays, and boulders, and 

 exhibit many signs of sudden and tumultuous formation. Mr. Belt 

 was of opinion that the great glacier from Greenland reached the 

 coast of Europe somewhere near Brest, and caused in the West of 

 England an immense fresh-water lake which reached to a height of 

 at least 1,200 feet above the present sea-level ; and that in this lake, 

 the drift was deposited by floating ice. — 29. 



Perhaps it would be safer to refer these phenomena to the 

 action of land ice, and to the subsequent deglaciation. 



Mr. Belt also found his " upland gravels " in Cornwall, on 

 Crousa Downs, near St. Keverne, overspread by blocks of 

 syenite. And he discovered gravels with foreign pebbles on 

 Straightway Hill, Devon, and on the summits of the hills 

 surrounding the Vale of Charmouth in Dorset. 



It is now requisite, with what courage one can, to approach 

 the Bagshot gravels. 



Mr. Lomas exclaims that he is familiar with the writings of 

 Hull, Wood, Prestwich, Moncton, Shrubsole, Irving, and others, 

 on the subject of these deposits, and finds, that each one has his own 

 theory as to their origin, and his own opinion regarding their 

 age.— 30. 



Mr. Clement Reid maintains that every kind of rock found in 

 the plateau gravels of Sussex and Hampshire has now been traced 

 to the Bagshot gravels of Dorset, and through them to the districts 

 still further west. 



On passing from Hampshire into Dorset it is noticeable that 

 the sands are often coarse and full of small splinters of flint. At 

 Morden and East Lulworth lenticular masses of coarse subangular 

 gravel, with green sand chert, can be seen. The Bournemouth 

 cliffs show these coarse sands — black-grit, lydite ( — radiolarian 

 chert), some greensand chert, and splinters of flint. 



Further west, the Bagshot gravels contain, in addition, so much 

 quartz and hard subangular palsezooic rocks as to make the finer 

 screened material look like a Cornish beach ; and they contain also 

 Purbeck marble and other Purbeck rocks. 



The various outliers S. and S.W. of Dorchester, all belong to 

 the Bagshot series and not to the Reading beds as formerly 

 supposed. 



Sir Joseph Prestwich thought they belonged to some part of 

 the glacial period. 



Mr. Horace Woodward had examined this gravel on 

 Blackdown, Portesham, and having found blocks of sarsen in it had 

 taken it for drift. — 31. 



It has been asserted by Mr. Reid and others that from these 

 gravels Budleigh Salterton triassic pebbles are entirely absent. 

 This would indicate, since they occur in the shingle of the Chesil 

 Bank, that the Bagshot gravels were not deposited during submergence. 

 One such pebble, however, which I show, I found near Hardy's 



29 — Q.J.G.S., xxxii., 80. 



30— Glac. Mag., i., 186, 



31 — Q.J.G.S., Hi., 490-5*6 (1896). 



