i8o 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1917 
boggy waterholes, and, being weak, sank in the mud, which closed over 
them and preserved their bones for us to find now. Many of the skulls I 
found could not be removed, as they came to pieces as soon as they dried in 
the sun. The great point of interest to my mind is that all the fossil animals 
which we have found are represented at this day by animals of a precisely 
similar type only on a much smaller scale.” 
Colonel Jeune intimated that he would present the bones to the Gloucester 
Museum. He also read some notes on the Ants of Queensland, extracted 
from a paper by Henry Tryon, read before the Royal Society of 
Queensland. ‘ 
I 
Mr Upton produced a small collection of pebbles, flints, and fragments 
of chalk taken from two beds of drift material on the banks of the Gloucester 
and Berkeley Canal. He drew attention to the fact that in the two cuttings 
through which the Canal runs — i.e., between Sims’ Bridge and Rea Bridge 
and near the Pilot Bridge — the elevated patches of Lower Lias Clays and 
Limestones are overlaid by banks of reddish clayey sand, in which are found 
a number of pebbles of quartz, quartzite and other material such as are 
usually found in ‘‘ Northern Drift,” together with a considerable number of 
angular fragments of flint and a few pieces of chalk. The sand of which the 
Drift-banks are composed consists almost wholly of well-rounded quartz 
grains with a small admixture of fragments of darker coloured rocks. The 
“ Northern Drift ” was usually assumed to have been transported from the 
North and North-west down what is now the main Severn Valley, whilst the 
flints came, in all probability, down the Avon Valley from a North-easterly 
direction, possibly from the cretaceous districts of Yorkshire and Lincoln- 
shire. The chalk is very hard and quite unlike that which occurs in the 
South of England. One point in connection with the flint fragments is that 
they are not in the slightest degree waterworn and are just such as may be 
seen on the surface of ploughed fields in chalk country. Their fragmentary 
character is probably due* to alternations of temperature. Among the quartz 
pebbles were three which bore obvious evidence of ice polishing. The speaker 
thought that the evidence pointed to a time when what is now the lower 
Severn Valley was occupied by a Lagoon, which, though extending over a 
considerable area, was comparatively shallow and suggested that a continua- 
tion of the range of Rhaetic Rocks, which the river cuts through near Sharpness, 
would have been sufficient to hold up the water until such time as the channel 
was deepened sufficiently to drain it off. Both the Northern Drift pebbles 
and the flints were probably brought from their respective places of origin 
by comparatively small fragments of ice towards the close of the glacial 
period. He did not claim to be an authority on the sujDerficial deposits, and 
invited Mr Gray to give his views on the matter. 
I Notts on Queensland Ants, by Henry Tryon. Brisbane, 1886. (From Five. Roy. Soc., 
Queensland, vol. ii., pt. 2, 1885). 
