104 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1919 
has been maintained. At the foot of a freestone escarpment 
near the King’s Beeches, at Cleeve Hill, 800 feet O.D., a bed 
of angular and subangular oolitic gravel about 20 feet thick, 
with some large blocks of freestone, is separated at about 6 feet 
from the surface by a dark-coloured band of clayey earth that 
formed the southerly extension of the floor of a Neolithic village 
( 64 , pp. 49-56). The composition of this gravel above and 
below the floor is uniform, although the upper part represents 
the accumulations of at least the last two thousand years. 
Land shells occur down to and for a few feet below the dark- 
coloured band. Some of the less soluble constituents near 
the base of this gravel, such as thick fossil shells, may be of 
Glacial age. 
The Jurassic gravels on the banks of the Frome, about 
45 feet above the stream at Stroud, which contain no Drift 
pebbles or flints, furnish typical examples of the angular, 
waterwom, and intermediate varieties. At Cainscross the 
section now shows, in descending order, 4 feet of sand}- rough 
gravel, 2 \ feet of sandy marl, and 12 feet of coarse and fine 
waterworn and well-rounded gravel with seams and pockets 
of oolitic sand and clay. The base is not exposed, but the 
proprietor, Mr. F. Harper, informs me that the waterwom 
gravel extends several feet deeper, and that the lowest part, 
which overlies the Lias, consists almost entirely of large sub- 
angular boulders of Oolite and Lias including Marlstone, a 
heap of which was lying in the pit at the time of my visit. 
Numerous tusks and teeth of the Mammoth and the teeth of 
the Woolly Rhinoceros and Reindeer occur in the gravel. 
Some of the masses of sand and clay appear to have been 
enclosed in the gravel in a frozen condition. These beds, as 
they appeared forty years ago, are carefully described by 
E. Witchell, who says in some concluding observations : 
“ During the gravel period the last change of level, the result 
perhaps of the general re-elevation, probably converted the 
Severn into an extensive lake, or chain of lakes, and the 
gravel beds were its shores and beaches. In the course of time 
the river deepened its channel at Sharpness and, lower down at 
Aust Cliff, the lakes were gradually drained ” ( 206 , pp. 146-53, 
