A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE deposits. The former occupy the Lias plateau south of Rugby, and at various localities appear to consist of 10 to 20 feet of gravel and sand with beds of stony clay. From Rugby to Lowmorton the surface deposits consist of about 13 feet of gravel lying on clayey sand, and a cutting on the London and North- Western railway showed a few feet of gravel and sand overlying stony clay chiefly derived from the Lias, and containing well striated pieces of Lias limestone, chalk and flint. In and about Rugby gravel and sand are exposed in various pits. At Exhall, north of Coventry, a deposit of clay and sand up to 75 feet thick has been described by Mr. A. Startin l as extending in a narrow band southwards from Griff to Foleshill ; boulders of igneous rocks and sandstone occur at the bottom of the mass. To the west of this the surface soil contains much angular de'bris derived from the Hartshill Quartzite of Nuneaton. West of the high ' Permian ' ground of Corley rounded quartzose (Bunter) pebbles become common, while on the other hand about Bulkington and Wolvey, Liassic fossils are to be found. Here again we have evidence of one movement from the north and another from the north-east or east. In addition to these spreads of gravel, sand and boulder clay which occur irregularly over the surface of the county, we occasionally come across large and conspicuous blocks of rock which have evidently travelled far from their parent beds. The larger of these ' boulders ' have always attracted notice. Few however seem to have been recorded in War- wickshire. Several of granite and felstone occur on the western confines north of Birmingham, and have been noted by the Rev. J. Caswell 2 of Oscott College ; and at Stockton, some few miles east of Warwick, a Charnwood granite boulder nearly 2 tons in mass and measuring 4 feet across has been enclosed and inscribed. 3 Mr. W. J. Harrison has noted two boulders in the village of Sherbourn south of Warwick ; one is a mass of Millstone Grit 29 inches across, the other of granite, 38 inches; while the same observer has recorded a small boulder of quartzose material at Exhall several miles west of Stratford-on-Avon.* Certain small tracts of drift in the north of the county fall within the area of the Atherstone sheet B of the Geological Survey map, and have been mapped and described by Mr. C. Fox-Strangways. There are gravel patches at Warton and Shuttington composed of pebbles without any admixture of eastern rocks ; they seem to have been derived chiefly from the Bunter pebble beds. Boulder clay, somewhat of the nature of brickearth and containing sandy and loamy bands, extends southwards from Market Bosworth towards Hinckley, just beyond the north-eastern edge of the county, and at the last named town it is stated 1 Proc. Warw. field Club (1866), p. 26.
- Rep. Brit. Assoc. for 1877 (pub. 1878), pp. 82, 83.
3 Rev. W. Tuckwell, Rep. Brit. Assoc. for 1886 (pub. 1887), p. 627. 1 Rep. Brit. Anoc. for 1890 (pub. 1891), p. 340. 'New series, sheet 155, showing Drift, by C. Fox-Strangways (1899) ; see also the accompanying Memoir, p. 37 et seqq. 36
