vol. xx. (2) NOTES ON COTTESWOLD-MALVERN REGION 
123 
the Avon Valley carrying sand and other debris into the Severn 
Plain. Another way in which the sands may have been 
transported from a section of the ice that extended from Rugby 
to Fenny Compton is indicated by Drift gravels that occur 
on the low ground to the west of the Edge and Brailes Hills. 
Flood water may have carried debris along this course to the 
Stour-Evenlode watershed and the Mickleton Gap, only the 
finer sediment reaching the Plain. 
The means by which the sands were drifted towards the 
Cotteswolds (66, p. 372) may be inferred from the conditions 
existing in the Tundra and Steppe regions bordering the Arctic 
Circle in Europe and America, a comparison with which will 
enable us to form some idea of the aspect of the Severn Plain 
when for long periods it was approached by the great ice-sheets 
on the north, east, and west. There were heavy snow-falls 
during the long severe winter. In the short hot summers 
westerly winds swept with great violence over a desert surface 
nearly devoid of vegetation, piling up the sand in sheltered 
positions under the escarpment. Professor Percy F. Kendall, 
M.Sc., whom I have to thank for useful suggestions, informs 
me that similar conditions existed in the Trent Valley from 
Newark to the Humber, and to some extent to the north of 
the Humber, and that sands were bknvn by westerly winds 
against and on to the escarpment of the Lower Lias. 
The absence from the sands of remains of the larger 
mammalia, winch indicates that they no longer frequented 
the district, and the late stage of the Glacial period at which 
the deposit was accumulated appear to coincide approximately 
with the disappearance of the cold-climate group of animals 
from Britain. The adverse effects of either Tundra or Steppe 
conditions, which, amongst others, have been advanced in 
explanation of the change, do not, however, appear alone to 
have been adequate. Although the long winters w r ere intensely 
cold and fierce blizzards greatly destructive of animal life 
frequent, they could not have caused complete exclusion 
while Britain was joined to the Continent and w'arm summers 
allowed migration to replace loss. 
If a break occurred in the succession of animal life — and 
