132
ON SOME PLATEAU DEPOSITS AT FELSTEAD
AND STEBBING.
By J. FRENCH.
IN the Geological Survey Memoir illustrating sheet 47, the chapter
on Post-Glacial Drifts (p. 64) is introduced by the following
paragraph, by Mr. W. H. Penning :—
"Here and there on the hills and higher grounds are patches of
loam and loamy gravel, never of any great extent or thickness, but
forming portions of what once was probably a much larger extension.
The fragments now left generally occupy slight depressions in the
Boulder Clay or other bed on which they occur, and seem to pass
down into it without any definite line of division. They occur at
nearly all levels from the top of the Chalk escarpment down to the
higher terraces of the present valley system."
To this Mr. Whitaker adds ; "It is possible that some of these
loams may be allied to the stony loam just described." The de-
scription of this loam is as follows (pp. 62, 63) :—
"A strong [misprint for 'stony'] loam or clay that often occurs
as a thin capping on the Boulder Clay, from the gradual decompo-
sition of which indeed it seems to have originated. The lumps of
chalk seems to have been dissolved out, whilst the insoluble flints,
etc. have been left behind, and the colour has changed to a
yellowish brown."
A careful examination of these deposits will, I submit, not only
raise those probabilities to certainties, but will show that in these
gravels and loams we have representatives of climatal and other
conditions which have long since passed away.
The examination of the position and of the mineral character of
the deposits in some sections in this neighbourhood afford material
for discussion.
At Molehill Green, Felstead (three miles east of church), there
is an exposure of Post-Glacial Gravel. It is represented in colour on
the one-inch Drift Map as a loam, which is certainly an error as
regards its western margin, although true for part of the Green itself.
The sections made last winter about a furlong west of Whelpstone's
Farm gave eight to ten feet of gravel resting on Chalky Boulder Clay.
The position and composition of this gravel is important. A reference
to the map will show that the place occupies nearly the summit of a
promontory made by the curve of the river Ter. It does not quite