10 
Were these older rocks ever deposited in the plain before us? 
Fortunately we are now able to give a complete answer. The 
various borings for water which have been made in different 
parts of the kingdom have disclosed Silurian rocks at Ware, 
Upper Devonian at Erith, Meux’s Brewery, London, Turnford, 
near London, and Harwich, and coal measures to the east 
of us at Burford, and they are without doubt underneath 
the Severn area we are looking upon. In considering the 
cause of all this change we must dismiss from our minds 
that it was altogether a local disturbance. It forms part, 
as Professor Phillips has shown, of a great line of dislocation 
extending 120 miles from Flintshire to Somersetshire, and 
he places the major part as having occurred at the close 
of the Permian. Strickland says this great fault seems 
to have formed a marginal cliff against which the Upper 
portion of the Triass or New Red Sandstone was deposited at 
Bewdley, Abberley, May Hill, and Purton Passage. I should 
like to say a word upon the change of organic life in the period 
represented by this boss. In the opinion of Professor Geikie, 
no greater contrast is to be found between the organic contents 
of any two successive groups of rock than that which is pre- 
sented by a comparison of the Upper Silurian and Old Red 
Sandstone systems of Western Europe. The abundant marine 
fauna of the Ludlow period entirely disappear from the region 
when the Old Red sets in. On the land that surrounded the 
lakes or inland seas of that period there grew the oldest 
terrestrial vegetation, of which no more than mere fragments 
are now known. It has been scantily preserved in the ancient 
estuarine beds in Europe and England, and more abundantly 
at Gaspé and New Brunswick. The American localities have 
yielded to the researches of Principal Dawson, of Montreal, no 
fewer than 118 species of land plants. I have often been to 
this section, and when considering the great physical changes 
which have taken place, the words of the Poet Laureate have 
come into my mind— 
“The hills are shadows, and they flow 
From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands 
Like clouds, they shape themselves and go.” 
