VIIL PERMIAN AND TRIASSIC SERIES. 91 



and reptiles,, with a few shells and land plants, occur in these strata, 

 with many small fragments of various stones, jasper, quartz, coal. 

 It is in some sense an earlier bone-bed a precursor of the rhsetic 

 deposits. 



And, to complete the deposit, we have next above 200 or 250 

 feet of red marls, with pale grey or greenish bands ; these latter 

 more abundant toward the upper part, and in fact constituting 

 without any red portion the uppermost layer, often twelve feet 

 thick. In a few places gypsum shews itself among these red marls, 

 above the Keiiper, but not abundantly ; and common salt exists 

 in them farther north about Droitwich as indicated by the brine 

 springs. 



Thus, on the whole, the Poikilitic series on the east of the 

 Malvern range consists of 



feet. 

 Upper red and pale green marls ..... 250 



Keiiper sandstone and shale 20 



.Lower red marls . . . . . . . 5 



Red and white sandstones and conglomerate . . 400 

 Haffield conglomerate : 200 



all the thicknesses being taken at the maximum. 



The Poikilitic strata, in their differences, in their inclination, 

 relative position, and order of succession, are exactly as might have 

 been expected to occur in a sea opened to new sediments which 

 washed the exposed and wasting cliffs of the ridge of Malvern rock. 

 If we could now restore the sea to the height of 600 feet above 

 its actual level, and let its currents rake the Malvern Hills, for 

 a long succession of ages, there would be formed in the actual Vale 

 of Severn a pleistocene series of gravels, sands, and mud, in the 

 place of the conglomerates, sandstones, and marls which we have 

 been considering. By ' working up' again the red deposits, which 

 would form the bed of this sea, there would be really a newer red 

 series, of pleistocene age, quite comparable, except in magnitude, 

 to the great mass of earlier deposits. 



Just such an operation happened at the beginning, and was 

 continued through a part of the Poikilitic period. 



A great disturbance of the Malvern district, and of tracts very 

 much extended beyond it, preceded this class of deposits. In con- 

 sequence of this, the whole line of paleozoic rocks from the country 



