LOCAL OCCURRENCES IN NATURAL HISTORY, 
65 
perceive brass plates on the walls near the river, recording the height of former 
inundations, and the great flood of 1484, when, according to Hollinshed, 
children in cradles swarmed about the fields, and when 
“ By sudden floods and falls of waters 
Buckingham’s army was dispers’d and scatter’d, 
And he himself wander’d away alone,” 
was for a century afterwardstermed 44 Buckingham’s Water.” But all these 
swellings of the vale have made no perceptible alteration in its character,* or 
effected more than the rooting up of a few trees, or a partial erosion of soil—a 
more powerful agent, then, must have operated to have scattered the heaps of 
Gravel that every where appear in the vallies, forming in many places cairns of 
burial for animals now and for ages unknown as living denizens of the country. 
I shall enumerate four kinds of Gravelly detritus occurring in the field 
of observation I have taken, whose origin is distinct, and which separately 
merit notice. 
The first is the angular Syenitic Gravel which occurs in great quantities all 
along the eastern base of the Malvern chain, and effectually conceals the junction 
of the Syenitic rocks with the Red Marl. Gravel-pits are opened in various 
spots along the chace, from which it is carted away. This being derivable 
immediately from the rocks above, may perhaps be more correctly designated 
as debris. It is, however, of ancient date, being covered over by vegetable soil, 
and a turf on which Sheep have grazed for many centuries. It probably indicates 
a greater altitude to the Malvern Hills in bye-gone periods, than they now 
possess. No fossils of any kind appear in this Gravel. 
The second kind is the Gravel of universal occurrence which has been usually 
called 44 diluvium alternating with veins of Sand, it invests the level country 
as with a rind, and scatters its loosened pebbles even upon the minor hills. It 
occurs of all intermediate sizes from that of a full puff-ball to the minutest grain; 
but in this district no masses occur of sufficient magnitude to be termed boulders. 
It lies generally in extended beds of various-sized pebbles, often with intervening 
* Perhaps the slight earthquake by which the course of the Severn was changed near Buildwas» 
in Shropshire, on the 27th of May, 1773, may be considered an exception. As a local phenomenon, 
certainly, it was remarkable, though hardly to be considered as a movement affecting the geolo¬ 
gical features of the country on a grand scale. It may, however, serve to account for isolated 
disturbances sometimes discernible. It appears that early in the morning of the day mentioned, 
when the air was perfectly calm, the earth commenced heaving and the trees waving as if shaken 
by a power blast, when all at once eighteen acres of land, on which was an Oak wood of lofty 
trees, hedges, barns, &c., moved with great velocity, and precipitated themselves into the Severn, 
then overflowing its banks, and choaked up the channel. The stream became dry below, while 
above a mass of water was hurried, -which, returning, formed a new navigable channel in a few 
hours three hundred yards long over a large meadow. 
VOL. IV.—NO. XXVI. 
K 
