523 
Quartz Rock of the Lickey Hill , See. 
The excavations produced by the waters entering this lowest lip 
of the oolite escarpment near Moreton in the Marsh, have been so 
from higher to lower levels along an inclined plane composed of uniform and moderately 
yielding materials. Any irregular projections that might have existed on such a plane 
would cause the waters to descend with accelerated velocity over the intermediate 
depressions, and to excavate that series of sweeping combes and vallies that wind with 
the regular flexures of a meandrous river, and present masses of land alternately advancing 
and retiring with all the uniformity of the salient and re-entering angles that usually mark 
the course of running water. 
Striking examples of such vallies extending upwards far above the highest springs 
that take their rise in them, and forming vast diluvian furrows along the back of the 
inclined planes of the great oolite formation, may be seen in passing along the line of the 
Roman Fossway, from Bath to Stow in the Wold : this line, being parallel to that of the 
great escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, crosses nearly at right angles all the vallies that 
descend from them towards the south-east, into the main trunks of the Thames or Avon; 
and in no part of this line are the features of diluvian action more strongly displayed 
than between North Leach and Stow in the Wold. It is obvious that such vallies can in 
no way be attributed to the action of springs or rivers that now flow through them, since 
they often take their origin many miles above even the highest springs ; their magnitude 
and depth bespeak the agency of a mass of waters infinitely more powerful than even the 
most violent water-spouts of modern times could produce ; their form also differs entirely 
from the deep and precipitous ravines which are produced by mountain torrents; and if it 
should be contended that the bursting of a series of water-spouts would be competent to 
set in action such masses of water as might have been sufficient to excavate them, unless 
we can suppose these to have fallen universally and contemporaneously, not only over the 
district under consideration but over the whole earth, they will afford no solution of the 
phenomena of these and similar contemporaneous systems of vallies which occur on strata 
that are similarly circumstanced in every part of the known world. 
The chalk downs of England, and the upper portions of the chalky and oolitic 
plains of France, are universally covered with a series of dry vallies exactly similar to 
those that occur on the back of the inclined planes of oolite of the Cotswold Hills; and 
the uniform texture and moderate degree of inclination which usually attends both these 
formations will explain the regularity of the diluvian vallies that have been excavated 
©n them, more especially near their most elevated regions, and terminating escarpments. 
In strata of higher antiquity, that have been more shattered and disturbed by violent 
cnnvulsions (i. e. in rocks belonging to the coal formation, and also in the transition and 
primitive rocks,) the irregularity in texture and disposition of the strata on which the 
diluvian waters had to exert their force, has caused the features of the vallies that traverse 
them to be in a much less degree derivative from the simple action of a retiring flood of 
