116 iiEPOUT— 1872. 



Notice of Veins or Fissures in ilie Kevper, filed ivith Elicdichonc-lcd, at Gold- 

 ciiffe in Monmouthshire. By J. E. Lee, F.G.S. 



The alluvial plain stretcbiDg along the south of Monmouthshire, on the banks of 

 the Bristol Channel, is hroken in one or two places b_y liassic outliers, one of which 

 forms the rising ground of Goldclitle. The upper part of this outlier consists of 

 Lower Lias and of t\ie " Anmicnifes-platwi-his beds." The strata immediately 

 below are concealed by a high sea-wall, built on the Keuper Marls, which form a scar 

 at low water. On this scar are many serpentine projections of various lengths and 

 sizes. Some of them are 21 feet long, and a foot or even 18 inches wide. In some 

 cases one appears to run under the other, and many of them are rounded, both 

 above and below ; not caused b}' the action of the present sea, but having been 

 originally of this form, for these rounded portions are covered by the original 

 Keuper Marl. They all consist of liassic bone-bed, Avith scales of GyroJepis and 

 teeth oi Ilyhodus and Saurichthys. It is presvnned that these projections are the casts 

 in the bone-bed of fissures made in the Keuper before the bone-bed was deposited, 

 which would then immediately fill them. The roundness of many of these pro- 

 jections is endeavoured to be accounted for by supposing these fissures to have 

 been formed, either wholly or partially, as in the present day on clay-scars, by riUa 

 of running water on the marls previously to the deposit of the bone-bed. 



On the Occurrence of Copper- and Lead-ores in the Bunter Conglomerates of 

 Cannoch Chase. By William Molynetjx, F.G.S. 



The author first staled that the district known as Cannock Chase was at the pre- 

 sent moment the scene of a series of extensive mining-operations, which, if even 

 moderately successful, would open up a very consideiablo area of A-aluable coal- 

 scams, computed at not less than 200,000,000 tons, and push outwards a distance 

 of upwards of five miles the northern apex of the South-Staffordshire coal-field. 

 This apex, as is well known, rested on Brereton, where the Coal-measures are 

 thrown down on the east by a fault of consideralile range and influence, and on the 

 west they are o^'erlappecl uncomfonnablj' by Bunter conglomerates. From Brereton 

 the conglomerates continue uorlhward over the Chase, which extends to within 

 about four miles of the town of Stafford, up to which point the mining investiga- 

 tions alluded to will be carried. 



The Cannock Mineral Eailway from Cannock to Rugeley occupies a valley 

 which runs nearlj' nortli and south, and unquestionably marks a line of fault of con- 

 siderable importance. This fault is laid down in the maps of the Geological Survey, 

 and has long been held as determining the western boundary-line of the workable 

 coal-seams of South Staflbrdshire. AVest of this valley, from a point a little south 

 of the town of Cannock, as far as Broctou and Milford, ranges the old surface-area 

 of a large portion of Cannock Chase, the greater part of which is at the present 

 time in a state of nature. In the maps of the Geological Survey, this area, with 

 but a trilling exception, is laid down as Bunter pebble-beds, overspread by uncon- 

 solidated conglomerates of the New Red Sandstone ; <ind it was in these beds, at a 

 place called Shore Hill, about a mile north of the town of Cannock, that the author 

 first detected, about two years ago, the copper- and lead-ore to which the paper 

 referred. The conglomerates are liere exposed by a section of from 80 to 100 feet, 

 and they dip to the west at an angle of about 20°. They consist of the ordinary 

 groups of pebbles and irregular intersections of sandy roclv ; and at about the 

 middle of the section occurs the copper-ore in the form of a green carbonate, in- 

 termixed with tlie paste or cementing material in which the pebbles are set. The 

 ore does not occupy any definite position in the gravels, nor is it confined to any par- 

 ticular horizon. It is sometimes met with in little holes left by the decomposition of 

 Carboniferous limestone or chert-pebbles : it frequently coats and even occasionally 

 insinuates itself into the interior of minutely fractured pebbles, and in places occurs 

 iu quantities which, if proportiouatcly persistent, would be of great commercial 

 vahie. At this pit the copper-ores, so far as the author had found, were not directly 

 associated with lead ; but about 20 I'cct beneath the copper-bearing beds, the hitter 



