——- 
83 
a 
individual, and he expressed an opinion that it was a British 
skull of the pre-historic period. 
Mr. E. Werueren, F.G.S., then read a paper on “ A Section 
of Strata exposed in a Railway cutting at Morse, near Drybrook.”’ 
The Bristol, Somersetshire, and Forest of Dean Coal-fields, are, 
he said, to be regarded as outliers of the great South Wales 
coal-basin, and the disconnection having been effected by the 
up-lifting of the older rocks into an anticlinal curve, which has 
since been removed by denudation, while the patch of Coal- 
Measures in the Forest of Dean was preserved by their lying 
in the trough of a synclinal curve. The severance between the 
Coal-fields of Bristol and Somersetshire was effected in the 
same way. By reference to the Geological Survey Map of 
England and Wales, the Forest of Dean Coal-basin is shown 
surrounded by belts of “ Millstone Grit” and “ Carboniferous 
Limestone.” There is however a considerable thinning out in . 
thickness: the total thickness of the Limestone in the Avon 
section at Clifton is 2,900 feet, while at Perlieu the thickness 
is 1,102 feet. In South Wales the thickness of the same 
deposit, according to Mr. Foster Brown, is from 700 to 1,000 
feet. The “ Millstone Grit” at Bristol may be taken to be, on 
a fair average, about 1,000 feet thick, but at Perlieu it is 
represented by a thickness of about 41 feet, and in South 
Wales of about 200 feet. The ‘Carboniferous Limestone” 
rests upon the “ Old Red Conglomerate,” and the passage beds 
between these two formations are exceptionally well developed 
in the road from Ross to Drybrook, in what is known as “ The 
Deep Cutting.” The “Old Red Conglomerate” is composed of 
veined quartz pebbles, embedded in an arenaceous ferruginous 
matrix. The section to which he specially drew attention has 
_ been exposed at Morse, in making the branch line of railway 
to Mitcheldean. The Limestone is not exposed in the cutting, 
nor is the total thickness of the Sandstone to be ascertained at 
this point. The bed consists of well-rounded grains of quartz 
and a little felspar. The quartz grains are many of them 
scratched; they average about ‘01 of an inch in diameter, and 
are cemented together by Kaolin, derived probably from the 
