102 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1919 
is stated in Jardine’s Memoir of Strickland ( 181 , p. clxvi., see 
also 113 , p. 217) that Falconer had found “ an old fluviatile 
Pliocene deposit of great extent ” in the Severn Valley, no 
beds of that age can now be recognised. Falconer’s opinion 
seems to have been founded solely upon the discovery in 
the Severn gravels of the remains of Elephas antiquus, 
Hippopotamus major, and other animals of the warm climate 
group, which however lived in Britain well into Pleistocene 
times. 
The reputed discovery by Allies of an Oliva “ in fresh 
condition ” in a bed of gravel at Kempsey led Murchison and 
others ( 133 , pp. 532-34) to assume that when the gravel was 
deposited “ the climate of the Vale of Worcester probably 
approached a warm character.” The Oliva was, however, 
associated with shells of Pleistocene and Recent species in a 
gravel of Glacial age. Shells of Tertiary age may have been 
carried by land-ice from the bed of the Irish Sea, but it is 
improbable that the only Oliva alleged to have been found in 
the Lower Severn Valley could have been in a fresh condition 
when it reached Kempsey, where all the associated shells are 
fragmentary and waterwom ( 31 , pp. 184-88). There is no 
other record of the discovery of unworn Tertiary marine shells 
in the district. This matter is discussed at greater length in 
a former paper ( 69 , pp. 86-90). 
The effects of early Glacial conditions in this region are 
unknown, but there are reasons for believing that a prolonged 
period of arctic cold with great precipitation preceded the 
arrival of the great ice-sheets in the Midlands. During this 
time the rivers were frozen and the Severn channel became 
filled with snow, ice, and the debris of disintegrated rocks 
brought down from the hills. The higher parts of the Plain 
and the Cotteswold Hills were alsQ deeply covered with snow. 
There is no trustworthy evidence of the invasion of the district 
by the ice-sheets, such as the occurrence of till containing 
striated boulders. The signs of crumpling of the rocks that 
have been observed are probably due to the expansion by 
freezing of saturated sub-soil during the Glacial epoch. The 
weathering of thin, false-bedded limestones produces a curvature 
