121 



are much disturbed, and the structure of the country is rendered 

 obscure by protruded bosses of the underlying old red sandstone 

 and its associated marls and cornstone. In some cases the old red 

 sandstone (as on the Borle Brook), constitutes the sides of narrow 

 ravines, on the flanks and in the hollows of which the coal is thrown 

 off at high angles of inclination. At Kinlet the coal-measures are 

 perforated by a wide and extensive mass of basalt, the structure of 

 which has been previously described*, and in the neighbourhood 

 of this rock they are much hitched and broken, the sandstones 

 being in parts converted into a hard siliceous rock called White 

 Jewstone. At Arley, on the Severn, coal-nieasures, surrounded 

 by old red sandstone, extend in a peninsulated form from the left 

 bank of the river, and are bisected by the trap dyke of Shatterford. 

 Another large mass of trap consisting of concretionary compact 

 felspar was last year discovered by the author at Church Hill, 5 

 miles south of Cleobury Mortimer, but its relations to the adjoining 

 coal-field cannot be detected. The great fault at Stanley, near 

 Higley on the Severn, has been caused by an upcast of the old red 

 sandstone, which there occupies both banks of the river, abruptly 

 cutting off the coal-measures. Allusion is then made to a short no- 

 tice f of this tract, in which concretionary calcareous rocks are de- 

 scribed as being subordinate to these coal-measures, but Mr. Mur- 

 chison shows that these rocks are nothing more than protruding 

 masses of cornstone of the inferior old red sandstone. He further 

 describes, in detail, a section extending from one of these masses of 

 concretionary limestone near Kinlet to Prescot Bridge. In this sec- 

 tion there is a full development of the superior group of the old red 

 sandstone, which although incoherent and of a yellow colour, and 

 therefore unlike the prevaiHng rocks of that formation, is seen to 

 pass upwards into a conglomerate, and dip under the true carbo- 

 niferous limestone of Orelton. It is this tract of old red sandstone 

 which separates the stinking coal-fields of Bewdley Forest from the 

 productive coal-fields of the Clee Hills. 



V. " Coal-field of Newent, North Gloucestershire." 

 The carboniferous strata are here so little developed as scarcely 

 to entitle them to the name of a coal-field, being composed of merely 

 a few carbonaceous beds, interposed between the new and old red 

 sandstones. In the vicinity of the town of Newent, where the 

 formation is most expanded, four thin seams of coal were formerly 

 worked, which were separated from each other by only a few yards 

 of shale. In some cases the coal was extracted from beneath the 

 new red sandstone. The extension of these carbonaceous strata is 

 cut off in the south and south-west by the transition rocks of May 

 Hill ; while to the north they gradually taper away, and are abso- 

 lutely seen to thin out between the escarpment of new red sand- 

 stone and the argillaceous marls of the old red ; hence the author 

 concludes that the Newent coal strata were originally deposited upon 



* Geol. Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 92. 

 f Geol. Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 20. 



