Silurian basin in which the Old Red or Devonian strata repose, and may be seen 

 cropping out from beneath the Old Red at the margin of the basin at various 

 points, at both the eastern and western limits of the county. We also become 

 acquainted with them in the district of Woolho|)e, at Hagley Park, Shucknall 

 Hill, and other places where it is to be remarked they are thrust through the 

 superincumbent Old Red Sandstone by the action of internal forces. Those pro- 

 trusions, and the physical aspect of the country are so intimately connected with 

 a great line of dislocation forming the eastern limit of the district, that this axis of 

 disturbance, marked by the upheaval of the Abberley, Malvern, and May Hills, 

 demands special notice. Wo trace it from the river Dee to the Severn, coinciding 

 nearly with the ancient political boundaries of England and Wales, and even 

 extending for some distance south of the Severn, as observed in the palaeozuic 

 upcast of the Tortworth district. It forms, in fact, for about 120 miles, the 

 eastern boundary of a vast region of elevation, including Herefordshire, Wales, 

 and a part of Ireland. Throughout the greater part of its course it partakes of the 

 nature of a fault ; the upheaved strata, which is commensurate with the amount 

 of vertical dislocation between the two sides of the great fault at Malvern, being 

 at least from 13,000 to 14,000 feet, — an "amount,'" says Mr. Strickland, ''greater 

 than can be paralleled in any other instance of a single fault which the world can 

 produce." 



An observer from the top of the Malvern syenitic ridge cannot fail to be 

 forcibly impressed with the physical contrast of the country on either side of this 

 line. To the west, the scenery is mountainous and picturesque, and belongs to 

 the troubled palaeozoic ages ; to the east it represents an extended plain which has 

 been subjected to comparatively little disturbance from subterranean forces, and 

 is composed of younger marine strata. But the picturesque appearance of the 

 elevated tract is only partially attributable to the dislocating forces which produced 

 its upheaval. Our hills and dales bear witness to long ages of denudation, when 

 ocean currents and rapid rivers gradually washed away vast masses of the upcast 

 strata — here meeting with greater, there with less resistance, scooping out the 

 valleys and leaving the hills as memorials of their power ; thus laying bare for the 

 astonished gaze of modern man those ' ' tables of stone ' upon which geologists 

 have been able to read the history of the world during ages so incalculably remote 

 as to be scarcely within the power of human mind to conceive. 



While the upheaved region was thus subjected to the degrading action of 

 water, its sedimentary matter was being incessantly carried to the mesozoic sea 

 which occupied the downcast region to the east, aiding to supply that ocean bed 

 \vith the materials for the successive deposition of the Triassic, Liassic, and Oolitic 

 strata, in which again we witness the traces of long subsequent denudation in the 

 valley of the Severn and the Cotteswold hills beyond. 



It will thus be seen that while the elevated district to the west was constantly 

 undergoing the process of degradation, the downcast to the east was being con- 

 temporaneously supplied with additional thickness of sedimentary strata. In 

 conformity with this view we find the upheaved Carboniferous beds to the west, 

 where they have withstood the denuding forces, occupying elevated situations on 



