50 POPULAR GEOLOGY. 



are sent o£E to other jiarts of the country not so well favoiu-ed in this 

 respect as ourselves. 



There is a Avell-known bed of ragstone which lies just over the stone 

 in many of the Northowram quarries, and upon this rag lies a bed of 

 shale. These two beds are particularly rich in fossil plants, the junction 

 of the two beds being sometimes one mass of fossils. It always suggests 

 to my mind when I happen to be there while this layer is exposed, the 

 idea of some great storm sweeping over the ancient forests, bearing 

 down all before it, and burying the ruins with debris. There lay 

 the plants perliaps, just where the storm had left them in the long, long 

 past, interlaced in all sorts of ways ; the Calamites, Lepidodendra, Sigillaria, 

 and Sternbergia, Hallonia and Ulodendra — most of them it is true ,mere 

 fragments but still sufficiently large to enable us to detect the different 

 genera. The greater number belong to different species of Calamites and 

 Lepidodendra I have often wished that I could carry the whole exposed mass 

 of plants with me just as they were, for this layer is so soft that the attempt 

 to break off a portion generally spoils the whole mass. But notwithstand- 

 ing the fragile nature of this layer many rare and beautiful fossils have 

 been obtained from it. The rng below abounds in fossils and they are 

 generally in a good state of preservation, the prevailing forms being the 

 Calamites and Stigmaria, though occasionally many other species are found. 

 The fi'eestone itself sometimes contains fossil plants, the fineness of the 

 stone allowing of the preservation of the most delicate fossils ; such as 

 ferns, leaves, fruit-stones, &c., and shewing the finer impressions of the 

 larger plants such as Calamites and Lepidodendra. The stone is in some 

 places quite mottled with small fragments of fossil plants ; appearing as if 

 an autimmal gale, had scattered withered leaves and twigs over the 

 water in Avhich the sediment, that formed these beds was deposited. 

 As the paucity and water-Avorn appearance of the Millstone Grit fossil 

 plants indicate that they liad been brought by rivers and ocean currents 

 from a far distant land ; so the profusion of the well preserved plants of 

 the Flagstone Rock teaches us, that we are near, if not on the very 

 confines, of those immense forests, the ruins of which formed the great coal 

 fields of Low Moor and Barnsley. 



Faults and Denudation. — 



As all stratified rocks were originally deposited in level sheets at the 

 bottoms of lakes, rivers, estuaries, or seas; if no other cause had been in 

 operation, we should always find the strata horizontal: but we frequently 



