^n'Nnt?^ which raised the Malvern Hills, 359 



further shows that this line of fracture, bounding the elevated 

 region on the east, partakes throughout the greater part of its 

 course of the nature of a fault ; that this fault is on an enor- 

 mous scale in its vertical and horizontal dimensions, and that it 

 is much concealed by the thick deposits of new red sandstone 

 which have covered it up on the downcast side, and followed the 

 sinuosities of its course. 



The demonstration of so vast a line of disturbance, evidently- 

 due to one set of operations acting at a very remote epoch, enor^ 

 mous in dynamic amount, yet comparatively limited in their 

 duration, is one of the grandest generalizations at which British 

 geologists have arrived. The nature of the movement which 

 has produced these results seems consequently to deserve a fuller 

 investigation than it has yet received. 



These disturbing forces appear to have been partially conti- 

 nued during, and even after, the deposition of the New E-ed 

 Sandstone. Both that and the incumbent Lias show proofs of 

 elevation and of dislocation, which may be regarded as the expiring 

 efforts of those vast forces which raised the mountains of Wales 

 above the plains of England. Indeed the general south-easterly 

 inclination of the whole secondary series of Southern England is 

 a further proof of the continuation of these elevating movements 

 down to a late geological date. But all these more recent changes 

 of level were so feeble in amount compared to the vast convul- 

 sions of the pre-triassic period, that we may eliminate them 

 altogether from our present inquiry. We shall gain clearer 

 notions by supposing the New Bed Sandstone and all the supe- 

 rior formations entirely removed, and by endeavouring to decipher 

 the state of things which immediately preceded the deposition 

 of those strata. 



Of the whole line of dislocation above mentioned, the ten or 

 fifteen miles which include the Malvern and Abberley Hills pro- 

 bably aiFord the best information on this subject. The syenitic 

 axis of Malvern, eight miles long, about half a mile wide, and 

 almost perfectly straight, naturally suggests the idea of a vast 

 dyke of injected trap rock. But Prof. Phillips has successfully 

 shown, from the absence of lateral ramifications of syenite, from 

 the rare and slignt indications of metamorphic action, and from 

 other phsenomena, that this plutonic ridge must have been ele- 

 vated in a solid state. Indeed the fact that it occurs, not on a 

 line of simple fissure, but on a line of fault, is conclusive of its 



or the end of the Permian epoch. From the conformability, however, of 

 the " Lower New Red Sandstone " to the Coal-measures in Staifordshire 

 and Shropshire, and its unconformabiUty to the Triassic or Upper New Red 

 Sandstone, we may consider the conclusion of the Permian epoch as the 

 probable date of this event. (See Murchison's Silur. Syst. p. 131.) 



