424 
Dean brought the summer excursions of the Club to a con- 
clusion. Every facility was afforded by the authorities at the 
Midland Station for the comfort of the members, and after an 
early start from Bath, Gloucester was reached in time to allow of 
a visit to the Cathedral by some of the more youthful and 
energetic ; the others, more advanced in years and perhaps in 
wisdom, quietly awaited the departure of the train for Longhope, 
reserving their energies for the long day they had before them. 
At Longhope they were met by the Rev. Charles E. Dighton, 
Rector of Mitcheldean, who brought with him Mr. Richard Gibbs, 
a former employé of the Geological Survey, and one who has done 
good work in his day by collecting fossils for the Jermyn Street 
Museum. Without delay an exposure of olive-coloured micaceous 
mudstones close to the station was visited, and after a few words 
from Mr. Gibbs," pointing out their position as the Ludlow or 
Upper Silurian beds, dipping with their associated “ tilestones” 
rapidly westwards under the Old Red Sandstone, the Secretary 
called the attention of the members to some of the geological 
features of the neighbourhood. 
They were standing, he said, on the outer edge of one of those 
coal-basins, the existence of which, associated as they were with 
great disturbances of the strata, caused such a variety in the 
scenery and enabled them to know so much of the history of the 
rocks exposed by these movements. They had already visited 
the Bristol and Somerset coalfield, and were now able to cross 
that of the Forest of Dean; an irregular oval in shape, contained 
between the rivers Wye and Severn and the road from Gloucester 
to Ross, its longer axis from north to south was about ten miles, 
its shorter, from east to west, about six miles. Like the others, 
it was surrounded on all sides, with one slight exception, by the 
Carboniferous Limestone resting upon a base of Old Red Sand- 
stone ; on this side dipping with a high angle westwards, whilst - 
on the opposite side these beds had more or less an easterly dip, 
thus forming a trough or basin which contained the coal. With 
