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palaeozoic deposits was broken up and laid on edge, — when volcanic eruptions 

 and overflows took place that exterminated every living creature in those ancient 

 seas, — when consolidated mineral masses, such as the Malvern Syenite, deep 

 down in the bosom of the earth, were thrust upwards from below, to form a 

 mountain chain upon the planet's surface, — when, in short, one great epoch ceased 

 to be, and another creation, fresh from the Creator's hand, came forth at His 

 fiat, to live and breathe and enjoy. 



Along the sides of this valley we observed immense mounds of boulders and 

 gravel, the detritus of materials that once occupied a surface far above our heads. 

 The rough sand and rolled peobles were all that remained of the immense masses 

 which once connected the Blorenge with the Scyrrid, and Pen-cerig-calch. We 

 gazed in wonder at the mountains around us, not only as evidences of the enor- 

 mously long period during which those boulders and pebbles were gathered 

 together in bye-gone ocean beds, but still more as proofs of the furrowing out 

 of the strata which at one period filled up the very valley we were walking up, 

 to the depth of more than 2,000 feet, and united the widely separated mountain 

 masses around us. 



As we ascended the Blorenge, we saw, tn situ, the red and green Comstone 

 deposit so common in this pairt of Herefordshire ; and I would here call pjirticular 

 attention to this Cornstone group, as it appears above the detritus ol the Usk 

 Valley, on the sides of the Blorenge, and more especially on the northern escarp- 

 ment of the Scyrrid, for it is by such examples the young geologist learns to 

 connect strata with strata, though separated often by many intervening miles. 

 In the Blorenge the Cornstone is not well developed ; but the remarkable 

 ridge of the Scyrrid, where of old the Druid worshipped, and which we 

 shall I trust visit on our expedition next month to Monmouth Cap, exhibits 

 a fine section of thick beds of true Comstone, passing under red, brown, 

 and chocolate sandstones, and surmounted by the quartzose Conglomerate, the 

 uppermost member of the Old Red Sandstone, the composition of which so 

 much excited oiu: curiosity on our visit to the Blorenge, of which more anon. 

 It is this Comstone group of the lofty mountains of the Breconshire Fanau, of the 

 Blorenge, the Sugar Loaf, the Scyrrid, and all the hUls around Abergavenny, that 

 once was continuous with the hiUs of Foxley, Moccas, Weobley, Tenbury, 

 Bromyard, Dinmore hill, and Robin Hood's Butts (the Pyons). The upper beds, 

 the Old Red Conglomerate, are as I said before gone from the hills of the district ; 

 swept away, but still left on the summit of the Scyrrid. On the Blorenge 

 again other beds, the representative of another age in the planet's history, are 

 piled as monuments of the wondrous past. 



We passed oil the Blorenge, upwards, from these Cornstone beds which there 

 are not well developed, to the pebbly beds and conglomerates which constitute 

 the upper bed of the Old Red Sandstone, — form the underlying encircUng edge 

 of the great South Welsh coal basin, and of Dean Forest — which appear in large 

 subcrystalline masses on the western face of the Brown Clee Hills — are seen 

 below the Carboniferous limestone at Symond's Yat, on the gorges of the Wye — 

 and rest above the Cornstone on the summit of the Scyrrid. This upper member 



