Geological Society, 377 



the great basaltic dyke. He corrects the observation formerly made 

 that some of the faults which affect the elevated tract of the Brown 

 Clee Hills are the fissures of eruption of the basalt which crowns 

 their summit. These faults, running from north to south and tra- 

 versed by others trending from east to west, are all upcasts, and 

 contain no basaltic matter, the chief eruption of which is supposed 

 to have taken place at the north end of the Abdon Burf. Various 

 details are given respecting this poor coal tract, which, though 

 interesting in the theory of the formation of coal basins, cannot be 

 included in an abstract. The mountain limestone is entirely absent, 

 the coal resting on old red sandstone, as previously remarked by 

 Mr. Wright of the Ordnance Survey.* 



IV. Forest of Wyre, 

 In this tract are comprehended all the carboniferous strata 

 ranging from two miles south-west of Bridgnorth to the Abberley 

 Hills, the central and broadest portion of which is called the Forest 

 of Wyre. The outline of this coal tract is very irregular, and the 

 measures rest upon and are surrounded by the old red sandstone, 

 except near Bewdley, where they are flanked by the new red sand- 

 stone, and on the sides of the Abberley Hills, south of the Hundred- 

 house, where they have been deposited in thin patches upon transi- 

 tion rocks. Accounts are given of the different seams of coal and 

 layers of ironstone which have been worked, near Deux Hill, Billings- 

 ley, Stanley, Mamble, Pensax, &c. The greater part of these 

 works, including all the deep shafts, are abandoned, owing chiefly 

 to the poor and pyritous quality of the coal. Sweet coal is of 

 rare occurrence, though some thin beds occur at Lower Harcourt 

 near Kinlet. These sulphureous coals are little used, except for 

 drying hops and burning lime; but the sandstones, though only par- 

 tially quarried, afford excellent building material. Some peculiar 

 conglomerates, having a matrix of decomposed trap, occupy the 

 lower beds of the series south of Bewdley. In general the strata 

 are much disturbed, and the structure of the country is rendered 

 obscure by protruded bosses of the underlying old red sandstone 

 and its associated marls and cornstone. In some cases the old red 

 sandstone (as on the Borle Brook), constitutes the sides of narrow 

 ravines, on the flanks and in the hollows of which the coal is thrown 

 off at high angles of inclination. At Kinlet the coal-measures are 

 perforated by a wide and extensive mass of basalt, the structure of 

 which has been previously described f, and in the neighbourhood 

 of this rock they are much hitched and broken, the sandstones 

 being in parts converted into a hard siliceous rock called White 

 Jewstone. At Arley, on the Severn, coal-measures, surrounded 

 by old red sandstone, extend in a peninsulated form from the left 

 bank of the river, and are bisected by the trap dyke of Shatterford. 

 Another large mass of trap consisting of concretionary compact 

 felspar was last year discovered by the author at Church Hill, 5 

 miles south of Cieobury Mortimer, but its relations to the adjoining 



* Geol. Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 7. 

 t Geol. Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 92. 

 Third Series, Vol. 6. No. 35. May 1835. 3 C 



