02 



away in South Wales to the St-vern near Cressage, and there bifurcating. The 

 eruptive rocks of the Wrekin, Lilleshall hill, Charlton hill, and Wreck wardine, 

 mark the prolongation of the same line in a Nortli-Eastcrly direction. Overlying 

 the Caradoc sandstone come the Wenlock rocks, forming the lino of hills which 

 we see running diagonally across Shropshire, from the Severn at Coalbrookdale 

 to Ludlow, in a direction exactly parallel to the line of fault I have described, 

 and also to the ridges of the Longmynd and Stiper stones. On the S.E. slopes 

 of Wenlock Edge lie the Upper and Lower Ludlow, separated by the Aymestry 

 limestone, which is well developed at View Edge, near Stokesay, but thins out 

 towards Wenlock, sometimes appearing as two thin bands parted by shale. 

 The highest beds of this series, comprising the celebrated Ludlow bone-bed and 

 the Downton sandstone, form a group of " passage beds," connecting the Silurian 

 system with the overlying old red sandstone. This formation covers the whole 

 of South Shropshire between Wenlock Edge and the Severn, and rises to a con- 

 siderable height on the Clee-hills, where it is capped by two remarkable patches 

 of coal strata, which seem to have owed their preservation from the denuding 

 power which has swept away most of the coal strata of the surrounding district 

 to the covering of basalt, which has at these points been erupted through and 

 overflowed the coal measures. 



I should mention that at Farlow, on the other side of the Titterstone Clee- 

 hill, at the top of the Old Red series occurs a yellow sandstone, which is supposed 

 to be the equivalent of the Dura Den beds in Scotland, in which the Ptericthys 

 occurs. Farlow is, I believe, the only locality in England in which the Ptericthys 

 has been found. To the north and west of Wenlock Edge— the Old Ked beds 

 have been broken up and denuded by the vast ice-blocks which seem to have 

 drifted from the north — leaving only a few patches, the chief of which occur on 

 the hills of Clun Forest, immediately to the west of us, 



I fear I have not been as lucid in my explanations as I could wish ; but 

 the weather had made so many of the principal points unusually obscure, that 

 I trust any obscurity in my remarks will be excused on the score of the difficulty 

 of describing what ought, but cannot, be seen. We are sometimes wont to boast 

 that England is the world in little— and the prospect from this spot embracing 

 hills and rocks, which contain the records of well nigh every epoch in the great 

 Palceozoic era, and representatives of almost every member of the Silurian, 

 Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, may surely be considered as going a long 

 way to prove that geologically speaking, at any rate, that boast is true." 



After the applause with which the address was received had subsided, 



The Rev. J. D. La Touche said that he would supplement the very able 



remarks of his friend Mr. Purton, by calling attention to an important stratum, 



upon which he had touched but slightly, — the Llandovery rocks. This stratum 



is extensively exhibited iu this neighbourhood, and is well marked both by its 



