46 



volume contains the younger formations called Tertiary, containing the modern 

 forms of life, and on which London is built, the Isle of Wight and Hampshire 

 basins affording ample illustrations of the older divisions of the Tertiary 

 deposits. The fourth ivlumc is devoted to the Quaternary or still more modern 

 deposits containing beds of drift sand, gravel, clay, till, &c, that Ho strewed 

 over the surface of our valleys, and having the bones of huge mammalia, no 

 longer found in our latitudes, embedded in those deposits, and often huge 

 boulders that have been transported many miles from their oiiyinal bed to their 

 present resting place. Such, then, are the contents of the four-volumcd rock 

 book, every chapter of which is written in characters that the trained mind and 

 practised eye of the geologist can decipher and understand. 



Our chief observation to-day from Symond's Yat relates, however, more 

 especially to the first volume of this eventful history, ami therefore it is to the 

 Palaeozoic formations that I must now direct your attention, although I shall be 

 able to give you lessons out of the fourth volume, not far from the spot 

 whereon we now stand. The Palaeozoic rocks include : 1st, the Fundamental, or 

 Lawrentian Gneiss and the Cambrian rocks of Wales ; 2nd, the Lower and 

 Upper Silurians, exposed at Backbury Hill and the Malvern Hills ; 3rd, the old 

 Red Sandstone, or Devonian, which you see in all its grandeur around you, 

 and divisible into a lower, middle, and upper series. Sections of the upper beds 

 you have already observed in our walk to-day ; 4th, the Carboniferous formations, 

 consisting of the Mountain, or Carboniferous Limestone, on which we now stand, 

 and the bold escarpment of which forms the magnificent vertical wall of the 

 celebrated Coldwell rocks, so splendidly wooded, and through which we have 

 wended our way hither ; then before you is the Carboniferous formation of the 

 Forest of Dean, with its Coal Measures, and Millstone Grit, and Sandstones, 

 and Shales, lying in a perfect basin, the lips of which are formed of Car- 

 boniferous Limestone ; and 5th, the Conglomerate Sandstone and l\ed Marl, 

 representing the Permian Formation. 



The Lawrentian and Cambrian rocks are without our present limits, but 

 the Silurian strata are well exposed on the western slope of the Malvern Hills, 

 at Backbury Hill, and in your own classical distiict of AVoolhope from which 

 your Club takes its name ; these rocks, therefore, are most interesting to you 

 Woolhopians, and you have done justice to your own country, for I observe 

 in the four splendid volumes of the Transactions of your Club several 

 important papers and communications on these Silurian rocks. The late 

 railway cutting near Malvern through the "Wenlock shale has brought to 

 light a beautiful series of Silurian fossils, and demonstrated the richness of the 

 old Silurian beach in the earliest forms of animal life. Those who think that 

 the great Author of Nature was trying "his prentice hand" on the con- 

 struction of the 'Silurian fauna, will find to their astonishment that the shores 

 of that ancient sea contained as great a diversity of species, each abounding 

 in as many individuals, and representing structures as beautiful, forms as 

 typical, and an organisation as complicated as those that arc found in the 



