A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE but more rolled ; and at the top 'Northern Drift' pebbles." When Phillips saw the section, however, a more sandy development was being worked.*' Brooks obtained from here the molar of Elephas antiquus. Ledbury is built partly on the Old Red, and partly on the gravels of the Leadon, from which a number of bones and teeth of mammoth and rhinoceros have been obtained • while from near Bosbury bones of extinct species of elephant, elk, and deer are recorded. The drift of the Cradley district is interesting on account of the numbers of waterworn specimens of the Liassic pelecypod Gryphaea arcuata that are being constantly found. Presumably they have come from the north. In the lowlands of that portion of the county which lies between Clifford on the Wye, near Hay, and Kerne Bridge, also on the Wye, and near the celebrated Goodrich Castle, few details concerning the Superficial Deposits have been recorded. An instructive section was revealed at the foot of the hill upon which Clifford's Castle is built when the railway was constructed. Here Symonds noticed a gravel-bed full of the bones of ox, boar, and deer, overlaid by silt and gravel at least loo ft. thick, while spread over the whole of the hill-side was coarse debris, distributed, so Symonds held, by land-ice. Gravels, which Symonds referred to the Low Level Gravels, cap the hill upon which Hill Court, to the east of Goodrich, is built, and the deposits there contained some very large masses of rock. Several lakes must have existed in Herefordshire in comparatively recent times. '"^ In sewerage excavations lake-silt has been proved at a depth of 40 or 50 ft. below the surface at Hereford ; while in Stonelow Meadow, near Barr's Court Station, Curley recorded in descending order, (i) surface-soil, I ft. ; (2) brick-earth, 3 ft. ; (3) peat-bed, 3 ft. ; and (4) a marl-bed with leaves in the upper portion and crowds of fresh-water shells, such as Fivipara vivipara, Vahata piscinalis, Sphaerium corneum, and species of Planorbis and Limnaea, in the lower. The marl-bed was 2 ft. thick."' The most interesting discovery in connexion with the Pleistocene deposits was made quite recently by the Rev. H. E. Grindley, who found at Bredwardine a clay-bed, pierced with root-like structures, which proved to be full of foraminifera. Mr. Joseph Wright, of Belfast, who identified the foraminifera from the Bredwardine clay, found them also, but less plentifully, in clay from Breinton associated with diatoms. Mr. Grindley has been unable to definitely ascertain whether these foraminiferous clays come above or below the Glacial Drifts of the neighbourhood. They look as if they occupied an inferior position, but Mr. Wright reports that the foraminifera are all common shallow-water forms and might be found almost anywhere in muddy places off our coasts ; while the associated diatoms in the Breinton clay indicate a brackish water deposit, which, from collateral evidence, was laid down close to the shore. ' The evidence goes to show a submergence of 200 ft. or more.' " Pm. Cotteswold Nat. F. C. iii (1865), p. 35. Mem. Geo/. Surv. ii, pt. l (1848), pp. 15 and 79. ^^ Murchison and Symonds, Trans. Woolhope Nat. F. C. 1852, pp. 48-50 ; Trans. Malvern Nat. F. C. pt. 3 (1852-70), pp. 6-7. '»" See Merewether, Trans. Woolhope Nat. F. C. 1877, pp. 21-2. "" Ibid. 1866 (1867), pp. 253-4 ; see also H. C. Moore, ibid. 1902-4 (1905), pp. 330-5. 32
