447 
the fault the inclination is about 5° to the east-south-east, and to the 
west about 5° to the south- south-west or south ; and the slight de- 
parture from horizontality i is strongly contrasted with the high incli- 
nation of the lower sandstone... The resemblance of this “deposit, 
consisting of rounded pebbles in soft red sandstone, to ordinary 
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 Sieh ounted: by 
red or Keuper marls. At least nine-tenths of the pebbles consist 
of white and crystalline, 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 ‘quartzose conglo- 
merate, derived, the author believes, from the old red system ; like- 
wise pebbles of chert, containing casts of Spirifers and Crinoidea. 
Patches of grayel 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 Tidge. The gravel re- 
sembles the conglomerate of the new red candietane: 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 graveily 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 + ; 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- 
* The height of 587 feet, given in the corrigenda at p. 316, has been as- 
certained to be incorrect. 
+ The age here assigned to the trap rocks of the Lickey coincides, Mr. 
Strickland says, with that attributed to them, as well as to the trap rocks 
of Abberley and Malvern, by Mr. Murchison, though the want of uncon-' 
formability between the upper and Jower new red strata was apparently 
unknown to that gentleman. (Silur. Syst., p. 67.) 
