\ 

 1\ C. Cantrill — Keiqm^ Outlier near Kidderminster. 267 



yards, and width 230 yards. It is marked along the north-west side 

 by a steep wooded escarpment, formed by the ordinary weathering 

 of the more durable Keuper basement beds overlying the soft Upper 

 Banter Sandstone. The boundary between the two formations runs 

 along tlie scarp some yards below the summit, and sweeps round the 

 north-east and south-west ends of tlie hill and runs into the fault 

 which forms the south-east boundary along the whole length. 



Viewed from the north-east or south-west the outlier is seen 

 standing as a bold eminence in advance of the main escarpment. 

 'J'he general contour of the hill is represented with sufficient accuracy 

 in tlie Section given above. The highest point is about 360 feet 

 above ordnance datum. This is 44 feet higher than the crest of the 

 main escarpment. 



The main escarpment, at various points of its course, offers 

 abundant rock-exposures. The Bunter, being usually too soft for 

 building-stone, and too hard for sand, has seldom been worked. 

 But the thin shelf of Keuper along the top of the scarp has been 

 largely drawn upon for the foundations and lower courses of 

 neighbouring farm buildings, and such-like purposes, and these old 

 quarries, with their steep pick-scarred faces, offer excellent sections, 

 especially as they have not been worked for many years. Several 

 small openings occur on Mount Segg, but there is a much finer 

 series along the scarp of the outlier itself, all long since disused. 

 The principal of these are roughly indicated on the Sketch Map. 



Tlie basement beds of the Keuper [f 5] in the district consist of 

 a sandstone, coarse, usually thick-bedded, hard, but incoherent, and 

 of a dull reddish-brown colour. There are in some beds small 

 pebbles interspersed throughout the mass, usually of yellow and 

 white vein quartz ; but many consist of rolled fragments of a 

 very fine dark- red clay or marl. In some sections, coarse, highly 

 calcareous, hard bands — cornstones, locally known as catbrain — 

 occur, consisting of a mass of small rolled fragments of red marl, 

 and occasionally of quartz, embedded in sand, and the whole 

 cemented together by an excess of calcium carbonate. One such 

 band occurs at about 30 or 40 feet above the base, though apparently 

 consisting not so much of a regular bed as of disconnected lenticular 

 masses at about the same horizon. Some of the beds are fissile and 

 highly micaceous, and occasionally marl bands occur. 



The whole mass is exceedingly variable ; it is practically im- 

 possible to fix any definite horizons, save, perhaps, that of the 

 cornstones, and generally no two sections are exactly comparable — 

 beds thinning out or entirely changing in lithological character in 

 a distance of two or three yards. ^ Such is the general character of 

 the basement beds of the Keuper [f 5] in the district. 



These beds in some sections rest on an apparently uneven surface 

 of the Upper Bunter Sandstone, occasionally with a layer of rolled 

 red marl fragments intervening. In other places the beds seem 

 to pass into the underlying Bunter without any distinct plane of 



1 Consult Hull, " Permian and Trias Eocks of Midlands." 1869. Memoir of 

 Geol. Survey. 



