to ebullition and efforts to rise of rocks in a state of fusion far below, and which 

 found a vent here and there along the range and amid strata of more recent origin 

 many miles distant. These changes were attributed to forces, producing not 

 merely the upheaval of the range itself, but also the great fault which has been 

 satisfactorily traced from the British to the Irish Channel, elevating the greater 

 part of Wales from the level of cotemporary strata, which lie underneath the New 

 Red Sandstone on the Worcestershire side of the Malvern Hills, and other for- 

 mations more recent still, of the eastern parts of England. 



We are not to imagine that no changes of surface have taken place since this 

 great catastrophe ; the uplifted and denuded strata of Herefordshire and South 

 Wales afford ample evidence of the extent of denudation, and data to reason out 

 their restoration, which gives as a result mountains of Old Red Sandstone now 

 washed away, in comparison with which the greatest height of any portion of 

 the existing deposit in South Wales is a mere fraction. This upward movement 

 and denudation were inferred to have taken place, for reasons assigned, just before 

 the period of the deposit which covered up the coal fields. It is quite foreign to 

 my purpose, on this occasion, to go further into the evidence of this vast and 

 interesting question, but I will confidently say, it is not built upon a mere idle 

 fancy, but the result of an accurate investigation of facts, now recorded and reasoned 

 out, with great patience of research. They who are anxious to follow up the train 

 of thought springing up now perhaps for the first time in their minds, will find 

 ample materials already prepared, the true value of which may be verified by a 

 very few days' field work, in the paper of Mr. Horner, in the first volume of the 

 Geological Transactions of London, 1811 ; Sir Roderick Murchison's Silurian 

 System, 1838 ; Sir Henry de la Beche's paper on the formation of the rocks of 

 South Wales and south-western England ; Mr. Ramsay's paper on the denudation 

 of South Wales, and the adjacent counties of England ; and Professor PhilUps's 

 elaborate paper on the Malvern Hills : aU to be found in the Memorials of the 

 Geological Survey of Great Britain, vol. i, 1846, vol. 2, 1848 ; and a paper by 

 the lamented Hugh E. Strickland, on the elevatory forces which raised the 

 Malvern Hills, in the Philosophical Magazine for November, 1851. I will only 

 add, that, looking to the existing evidences of adequate forces, it may be fairly 

 conjectured that the outburst of basalt which forms the top of the Clee Hills, 

 in Shropshire, between 20 and 30 miles distant (20' N. of W.), and which there 

 has not m^erely dislocated the coal field, and the elevated portions of it, 200 or 300 

 feet above the level of the top of the Malvern Hills, to a higher position than that 

 of any other coal field in Britain (?), carrying up the three lower seams of coal in 

 one place many yards above the corresponding strata on each side of the fault 

 (the upper seam being now wanted), and overflowing them like the top of a huge 

 mushroom, was obviously due to that period, and might not improbably have 

 been connected with the convulsive throes to which the elevation of the Malvern 

 Hills, and the continuation of the range to Abberley, and of the Old Red Sandstone 

 of Herefordshire may be attributed. 



Before passing to the Leintwardine meeting, with a view of giving the matter 

 a little more continuity, I will recall your thoughts to the last meeting of 1852, 



