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have weathered beneath untold ages of storm and decay. The softer Old Red rocks 

 have been much denuded, but the old camp of Wall Hills is composed of Old Red 

 comstones which, like the softer rocks at their base, contain relics of these strange 

 armour-plated fishes which once inhabited the waters in which their sediments 

 were laid do'wn, and whose enamelled plates and scales are beautiful to look upon 

 as they flash out under the blow of the hammer once more beneath the rays of the 

 sun. What changes have occurred ; what ages have elapsed ; what mountains 

 have vanished ; what seas have been changed into dry land ; what land into 

 ocean depths ; what groups of animals have lived and then died out for ever since 

 those armour-plated fishes swam, living beneath their summer sun. Behind May 

 Hill rises the elevated region of the Forest of Dean. Here, as you are aware, are 

 the Carboniferous rocks resting on the Old Red sandstone, a great outlier of the 

 coalfields of South Wales, which it resembles in every particular of geological 

 structure, and, like the South Wales basin, is surrounded by its belts of Millstone 

 Grit and Mountain Limestone. Here, too, are the noble beeches of the Speech 

 House, and on one side the rich vale of Berkeley and the Severn, and on the other 

 the limestone gorges of Symond's Yat, the Cowards, and their caves full of the 

 bones of the cave lion, the mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros, and the Irish elk, 

 vidth the rude chipped flints of an ancient race of men. Haffield closes our recital 

 ol the geological points that come within our day's notice. Few places show better 

 sections of the puzzling Permian conglomerates, or rather breccias, than that in 

 front of the hall door. The beds, as you may see, are well stratified, and dip 

 under the rocks of the new red sandstone which were deposited in those saline 

 straits in which were segregated and consolidated the great salt beds of Droitwich 

 and Cheshire. These salt beds, too, extend, interstratified wth the lower strata 

 of the new red rocks as far as Newent, at the base of May Hill. Near the town 

 of Newent the waters well out sufficiently impregnated to tell us of the salt beds 

 below. There is not much of historical lore to which to direct your attention, but 

 I may ask you to observe that ancient line of camps of British times which stretches 

 from Dinedor Hill, near Hereford, thence to Backbury, by Wall Hills to Haffield, 

 and from Haffield to Gadbury Camp, which rises in the New Red Sandstone 

 Vale by Eldersfield and Staunton. All these places I have mentioned were 

 important strongholds. But who dug their trenches and scarps, and who fought 

 for their capture and defence ? I confess I am altogether ignorant. At Gadbury 

 Roman coins and other relics have been found, showing that the Roman invader 

 had penetrated into a country which the Normans found to be covered vnth 

 " noisome forests ; " but I am not aware that the other camps I have mentioned 

 have furnished any relics of the men who manned them. Neither does the noble 

 camp of the Midsummer HiU, which rises above the Eastnor Obelisk, tell us much 

 more of its history. Below, on its flanks, are strong masses, mostly fallen debris, in 

 which some love to see the remains of British huts, but like the visions and 

 traditions of the ragged stone these belong rather to the region of imagination 

 than of facts. Ledbury was probably a British stockade when Midsummer Hill 

 was a British camp, and Wall Hills too. At all events, it has its Saxon records 



