386 Professor J. Phillips, [March 13, 



tlie early history of the earth, and to compare them with the re- 

 cognized phenomena of the existing world of matter and life. 



The Malvern hills stand nearly on a line of ancient boundary 

 between different races of people. From the estuary of the Mersey 

 to the mouth of. the Severn, the elevated region on the west has 

 always sheltered the truly British tribes ; while on the east invaders 

 of many names have alternately conquered and been dispossessed 

 of the richer vales and gentler hills. Even more remarkable is 

 their position in a geological point of view ; they stand between 

 monuments of two ages of the world : on the west, Palaeozoic — on 

 the east, Mesozoic deposits ; on the west, an elevated region of 

 undulated stratification — on the east, these strata thrown down by 

 a vast fault, and covered by others of later date, lie against the 

 Malvern hills as against a wall. So they stood between land and 

 sea at the close of the Palaeozoic period ; between dry land full of 

 trilobites and other organic monuments of the earliest ages of the 

 world, and seas swarming with enaliosaurians and ammonites, and 

 other forms of life never seen before that epoch, and long since 

 removed from the catalogue of life. 



The rocks which stand in this remarkable relation to physi- 

 cal geography are of igneous origin — that is to say, they have 

 acquired their present characters as rock by consolidation from a 

 state of fusion. The epoch when this occurred — the geological 

 date of the rock — was probably earlier than all but the very oldest 

 of the Palaeozoic strata of this region ; earlier than any of the 

 Silurian strata on the west of the chain. The Malvern rock is then 

 one of the very oldest masses of a granitic or syenitic nature which 

 can be mentioned in the British Isles, or even in Europe ; for in 

 the greater number of other cases where granite is found below 

 Palaeozoic strata, it shows by veins injected, and by great metamor- 

 phisms adjacent, that it was in fusion after the consolidation of these 

 strata. The date of the elevation of the Malvern rock is, however, 

 not of the same antiquity, for it was, with the strata deposited on it, 

 moved both upward and downward in the Silurian ages, and only 

 acquired its full relative height by great flexures after the Devo- 

 nian periods, and a great fault after the Permian ages. 



If we now replace in imagination the rocks in the position they 

 occupied before the occurrence of that great fault, and the still 

 earlier disturbance indicated by the great anticlinal and synclinal 

 flexures, we shall have the following vertical section of the strata 

 of Palaeozoic date. (A) 



And, turning our attention to the very earliest effects of which 

 traces remain, we shall reach a period earlier than the date of the 

 fluidity of the syenitic rocks of Malvern. The evidence of this 

 is found in many laminated rocks, with micaceous often twisted 

 surfaces (a), which lie in the midst of the syenite about Malvern 

 Wells, and Little Malvern, on the eastern face and near the foot of 

 the hills. These limited tracts of mica schist, and gneiss, are to 



