112 
QUATERNARY DEPOSITS OF SHROPSHIRE. 
May, 1890 . 
animals that lived in the glacial sea, the sands contain rolled 
specimens of fossils derived from much more ancient forma¬ 
tions. The pebbles of the gravels consist of a considerable 
variety of material. Igneous rocks, as granite, felsite, por¬ 
phyries, and greenstones are the most abundant. Quartz is 
also very common. In smaller proportion are grit, limestone, 
and slaty rocks. On the eastern side of the county, rolled 
flints are very numerous. 
The boulder-clay occurs much less abundantly than the 
gravels. At Ketley, it forms a bed, about eight feet thick, on 
the top of the sands. Patches of the clay are found else¬ 
where ; but whether the position of the clay, as a whole, is 
above the sands and gravels has not been determined. 
The large boulders usually consist of granite or some 
other igneous rock. They are very numerous in some places. 
At Wellington, for example, they are often used for mounting- 
blocks. 
The rolled fragments and the remanie fossils in the glacial 
deposits of Shropshire afford valuable information. The 
granite has come from Scotland or the Lake District; some 
of the igneous rocks from North Wales, others from the 
Wrekin ; rolled flints, probably from Eastern England ; grits 
and limestone from the Welsh border ; sandstone and quartz 
from the Triassic hills of North Shropshire. Decently a work¬ 
man found in a sand-pit near my house a good specimen of a 
fossil shell, Waldheimia obovata, derived from the Cornbrash, 
a division of the Lower Oolite. It appears probable that this 
specimen has come from the South or East of England. 
How have these travelled stones and fossils been con¬ 
veyed to our district? We can conceive of no probable 
agency except ice. Did this ice move on the land, as a glacier ; 
or in the sea, as icebergs or ice-floes ? The late Professor 
Carvill Lewis, of Philadelphia, who had done admirable 
glacial work in his own country, visited Europe in 1886 and 
1887, and, in the course of his investigations, studied our 
Salopian deposits. The general view which he was disposed 
to hold was that, in the glacial epoch, a great ice-sheet spread 
over Northern Europe, not only covering the land but filling 
up the shallow seas. This huge glacier moved southwards 
over the British area as far as Northern Shropshire, where it 
formed a terminal moraine. Glacier rivers issued from under 
the ice, and glacier lakes were formed amidst the moraine- 
accumulations. According to this view, our boulders were 
mostly conveyed to the area by the glacier, and our sands 
and gravels were deposited in the glacier-lakes. I have been 
unable to accept this view, so far as this district is concerned, 
