HEREFORD DISTRICT. 13 



is the southern extremity, which includes Shucknall Hill, Weston 

 Beggard, Bartestree, and Wilcroft. Shucknall Hill is a great 

 wedge of Aymestry rock faulted on edge through the Old Eed 

 sandstone. At Bartestree there is a dyke of Trap traversing and 

 roasting the Old Eed marls and clays into a hard sandstone ; while 

 a quarter of a mile farther north, near Hagley House, there is an 

 upcast of uppermost SUurian deposits just appearing at the surface, 

 capped by Downton sandstone, and red marls, as displayed in 

 the Ledbury tunnel At "Weston Beggard the Old Eed is quarried. 

 At Wilcroft there is the most instructive section of High level Drift 

 I ever beheld, and I have to thank L.vdt Ejiily Foley for directing 

 my attention to this excavation of these gravel beds. The Wilcroft 

 di-ift is extensively excavated for railway purposes, and occupies 

 a position of a hundred, or a hundred and fifty feet, above the 

 Frome, and existing Avatersheds. This drift consists of well rounded 

 pebbles of greenstone and Welsh rocks, interstratified with beds 

 of fine sand, in which are large angular Modes of Old Eed 

 sandstone. We saw one sticking out of the sand, and asked the 

 workmen to disinter the block. It was so large that it took three 

 of us to turn it over ; it was sharp and angular at the edges, and 

 evidently had been dropped in the sand as it lay. How but by an 

 ice floe, when every other pebble near was well water-woni and 

 rounded. The men informed us that they had quariied numbers of 

 these great blocks out of the sand, and that some were a ton in weight. 



NO. 7. THE HEEEFOED DISTEICT. 



This consists of the valley of the Wye, from Preston-ou-Wye on 

 the west, down to Mordiford on the east, together with a portion of 

 the valley of the Lugg, as high up its course as Bodenham, the 

 whole forming an irregular central plain to the county, and near the 

 middle of which stands the city of Hereford. The actual boundaries 

 adopted are a line from Mordiford westward, by the northern base of 

 Aconbury Hill to Dewsall, following some roads jjast Thruxton and 

 Kingstone, as far as Tibberton and Preston-on-Wye, returning in a 

 N.E. direction past Byford, Bridge Sollars, CredenhUl, Wellington, 

 and Bodenliam, to England's Gate. Thefice south-eastward ta 



