and along the shore of an ancient aea, — their elevated, inclined, and 

 in some, not imfroqucnt cases, overturned position, in which they 

 now remain, attributed to ebulition 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 haa 

 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 Worces- 

 tershire side of the Malvern Hills, and other formations 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 occosion, 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 re- 

 search. They who are anxious to follow up the train of thouglit 

 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, ISll ; 

 Sir Roderick Murchison's Silurian System, 18.38; Sir Henry de la 

 Beche's paper on the formation of the rock^ of South Wales and 

 south-western England ; Mr. Eamsay's paper on the denudation of 

 South Wales, and the adjacent counties of England ; and Professor 

 Phillips's elaborate paper on the Malvern Hills: all to be found in the 

 Memorials of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, vol 1, 1846, 

 vol. 2, 1818 ; and a paper by the lamented Hugh E. Strickland, on 



