By Mr. Cunning ton, F.G.S. 221 



of the reign of George the Third, and the latest manufacturers 

 were Messrs. Proctor, of Sheffield.-" 1 



The writer has a specimen which was found in grubbing up a 

 hedge near Newbury. Mr. Merriman of Marlborough, also pos- 

 sesses one, exhibited at the temporary museum there, in 1859. 



Amongst the numerous bones of the commoner animals which 

 have been obtained on this spot are a leg bone and six horns of the 

 roebuck (Genua capreolus), and it is to be noted that they are all 

 shed horns, that is, they have fallen off in the usual course, during 

 the life of the animals. This leads to the conclusion that herds of 

 this deer must have lived in the neighbourhood, in the old times. 



A particular account of the Oldbury White Horse, which was cut 

 in 1780, is given in the excellent paper by the Rev. W. C. Plender- 

 leath, vicar of the adjoining parish of Cherhill, in the FTitishire 

 Magazine, vol. xiv. 



The Geology of Oldbury Hill is very simple. The upper part of 

 it, including the whole of the area occupied by the camp, consists 

 of Upper-Chalk, with irregular traces of Tertiary clays and nu- 

 merous -pot-holes," some of great size. These are usually filled 

 with Tertiary clay, containing vast quantities of unrolled flints, 2 and 

 occasional Tertiary pebbles. 3 Many hundreds of tons of flints have 

 been dug for road-metal within the camp, so that the surface is 

 much disturbed, and the excavations have, alas ! been occasionally 

 carried to a mischievous extent into the very banks of the fortifi- 

 cations. 



It is not surprising that Sir Richard Colfc Hoare was impressed 

 with " the deep ravines » which render the camp naturally so strong. 

 The flanks of Oldbury especially, and of others of the adjoining 

 hills, present some of the most remarkable exam ples of the " dry 



1 " Athenaeum," March, 1864. 



2 We must here remark that some of the rarest of the fossil sponges, for which 

 Wiltshire is remarkable, have been obtained from the deposit of flints on the top 

 of this hill. Many of these are now in the Museum in Jermyn St. 



3 A remarkable outlier of a bed of clay with flints and similar pebbles occurs 

 as a deposit of drift, on the top of the hill near Monkton Farleigh. This was 

 contemporaneous and probably continuous with the beds on Oldbury Hill, but 

 the intervening strata have since been washed away. 



