Geological Society. 59 



gravel is so perfect, that Mr. Strickland was at first induced to con- 

 sider it as superficial detritus ; but its true nature is proved by its 

 containing numerous wedge-shaped masses of red sandstone and red 

 marl, and by its being overlaid at each extremity of the cutting by 

 the regular thick-bedded sandstone, which again is surmounted by 

 red or Keuper marls. At least nine-tenths of the pebbles consist 

 of white and cr}'stalline, or brown and granular quartz, the latter 

 doubtlessly derived, Mr. Strickland states, from such altered sand- 

 stones as exist in situ in the Lickey. The remainder of the pebbles 

 are composed of various traps, chiefly porphyritic, and often decom- 

 posed into clay. Boulders also occur of a hard quai'tzose conglo- 

 merate, derived, the author believes, from the old red system ; like- 

 wise pebbles of chert, containing casts of Spirifers and Crinoidea. 



Patches of gravel overlie the red sandstone on the flanks of the 

 Lickey, sometimes filling up considerable irregularities in its surface, 

 but none were exposed on the summit of the ridge. The gravel re- 

 sembles the conglomerate of the new red sandstone, as it consists 

 chiefly of the same materials, but it may be distinguished by con- 

 taining many fragments of slaty rocks, and by the whiter colour of 

 the pebbles. It attains on the line of the railway a height of 544 

 feet*; and as the gi-avelly soil which has been stated to occur on 

 the Lickey Beacon at an elevation of 900 feet may, Mr. Strickland 

 says, belong to the new red conglomerate, the gravel on the line of 

 the railway occupies the highest position which can with certainty 

 be assigned to the northern drift of that part of England. 



The point of greatest interest exposed in this cutting is the uncon- 

 formability of the lowest rock to the overlying conglomerate. As- 

 suming that the former is correctly identified with the " lower new 

 red," it follows, Mr. Strickland observes, that a tolerably exact geo- 

 logical date is obtained for the principal protrusion of the volcanic 

 rocks of the Lickey f ; and that they must have been erupted after the 

 deposition of the lower new red, and before that of the upper new 

 red. It is also probable, he states, that the pebbles of the conglo- 

 merate were in great part derived from the shattered upheaved strata 

 in the immediate vicinity. The author further infers, from the fault in 

 the upper conglomerate beds, that additional elevations of the Lickey 

 region took place at a later date, and threw the superior strata 

 into an anticlinal position. He also suggests that some of the dis- 

 locations connected with the Lickey may have occurred subsequently 

 to the deposition of the lias, as the faults which have aflPected that 

 formation and the new red sandstone in Worcestershire and Warwick- 

 shire appear, he says, to have radiated from the Lickey J. 



* The height of .087 feet, given in tlie corrigenda at p. 310, has been as- 

 certained to be incorrect. 



t Tlie age lierc assigned to the trap rocks of tlie Lickey coincides, Mr. 

 Strickland says, with that attributed to them, as well as to the trap rocks 

 of Abbeiley and Malvern, by Mr. Miirchison, though the want of uncon- 

 formabihty between the iip])er and lower new red strata was apparently 

 unknown to that gentleman. (Silur. Syst., p. 07.) 



I See Gcol. Trans., 2ad Series, vol. v. pp. 333, 335. 



