ON THE ALLUVIUM OF THE BEDFORD LEVEL. 
73 
MEMOIRS, 
On the Alluvium of the Bedford Level j Z>y C. B. Rose, 
F.G.S., ^c. 
Having on a former occasion presented to the geological 
world the investigation of a marine deposit of the Modern 
Epoch" ; the subject I have chosen for my present communica- 
tion is the alluvium of the Bedford Level, a lacustrine deposit 
of still more recent date, affording manifestations of changes 
upon an extensive scale, the greater part of which have probably- 
occurred within the human period. 
I shall avail myself of the labors of Dugdale, Camden and 
other topographers, in the collation of facts necessary to my 
views, as afterwards herein developed ; trusting, that if I cannot 
lay claim to much that is original, I shall at least render some 
service to the public by concentrating matter that is scattered 
through various repositories, and by so doing, spare the irksome 
occupation of research. 
This extensive flat, formerly denominated the "Great LeveP* 
but now, and for a considerable period of time, better known 
by the appellation of " The Bedford Leve?^ (from its having been 
first successfully drained by an ancestor of the present Duke of 
Bedford), comprises within its area portions of the six following 
counties, viz. Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, 
Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire ; it possesses an ex- 
tent of surface amounting to 400,000 acres, intersected and 
irrigated by six considerable streams and affords an outlet to the 
waters of nine counties. 
Dugdale in his " History of Imbanking and Draining,^' pub- 
lished in 1653, gives an excellant map of the " Great Level,'i 
representing it as " it lay drowned,'^ and those who have not ac- 
cess to either the first or second edition of that great work, will 
find its scite and extent laid down with great accuracy upon 
Professor Phillips's Geological Map of the British Islands recently 
published. 
VOL. II. NO. XVI. %, 
