HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



245 



and Eastern Warwick, all of which show round their 

 outer margins a narrow band of the intermediate 

 formation of the Permian. In each of these anti- 

 clinals, too, the denudation of the core of the arch 

 has been sufficient to wear away the carboniferous 

 from its centre, and to expose to view yet older 

 formations — the old red sandstone in the Forest of 

 Wyre, the Silurian in South Staffordshire, the 

 Malverns and Coalbrookdale, and even the Upper 

 Cambrian and its underlying igneous rocks in the 

 Wrekin, the Lickey, and near Nuneaton. With the 

 exception of the Silurian of Abberley and Dudley, 

 and the recently-discovered Cambrian of Nuneaton, 

 however, the pre-carboniferous rocks are compara- 

 tively inconspicuous, rising up merely in narrow 

 bands in the cores of long wedge-shaped hills. 



Fig. \i,o.—Phragmoceras. (From Taylor's " Common 

 British Fossils.") 



Professor Lapworth is further of opinion that the 

 rocks which occupy the lowest place in the geological 

 formations of the district are those crystalline and 

 partly schistose masses which form the core of the 

 Malvern Hills. That these rocks are of higher 

 antiquity than the Upper Cambrian of Wales is 

 demonstrated, he says, by the fact that fossiliferous 

 rocks containing Cambrian fossils of this age overlie 

 them, while the lowest recognisable zones of these 

 overlying fossiliferous rocks, the Holly Bush sand- 

 stone, are in part composed of their fragments. Dr. 

 Holl has described the old gneissic rocks and crystal- 

 line schists of Malvern, which were originally con- 

 sidered to be altered Cambrian strata, to be relics of 

 an old pre-Cambrian continent, and after examining 

 the Laurentian Rocks of Canada and comparing 

 them with the pre-Cambrians of the Malvern district, 



he considered them to be of equivalent age. The 

 Rev. W. S. Symonds has suggested also that the 

 Syenitic Rocks seen near Martley, and also between 

 Berrow Hill and King's Common, along the line of 

 the Abberley Hills, may be of pre-Cambrian age. 

 In this district then will be a core of the denuded dome 

 of Malvern, the first of the many stony pages of 

 "Nature's Infinite Book of Secrecy," the pictures of 

 which we propose to look at to-day ; and the very 

 excellent stratigraphical arrangement of the speci- 

 mens in these cases will render our task compara- 

 tively easy. 



The oldest known fossiliferous rocks in the Midland 



Hi 



■' 



Fig. 141.— Orthoceras. 



district are the Upper Cambrians which rest against 

 the crystalline rocks to the south of the Herefordshire 

 Beacon, and along the slopes of the Midsummer and 

 Key's End Hills. The lowest zone is the Holly Bush 

 sandstone which yields worm tracks and burrows, 

 graptopora, and thebrachiopod, Kutorgina cingulata, 

 specimens of which may be now examined. Next in 

 order above the sandstones, and resting conformably 

 upon them, occur the black shales which crop out in the 

 valley of the White-leaved Oak, and from which may 

 be obtained the beautiful little trilobites so character- 

 istic of them. The black colour of the shales, due to 

 the presence of carbon, has led to the fruitless search 

 for coal, and some of the members of the club have 

 obtained specimens of Olenus from a field, the name 

 of which — Coal Hill Field — seems designed to per- 

 petuate the folly or the ignorance of those who made 

 that ill-starred attempt. Pleasant memories remain 



