Permian Boulder Beds. 143 



the Annan in Scotland, brecciated like those of the 

 Clent and Abberly Hills. 



In the South Staffordshire district, and in the 

 Clent and Bromsgrove Lickey Hills, the Permian marls 

 and sandstones are capped by a remarkable brecciated 

 conglomerate, consisting of pebbles and large blocks of 

 stone, generally angular, imbedded in a marly paste, 

 once soft clay. These conglomerate beds are about 400 

 feet thick. South of Colebrookdale, near Enville, and 

 between that country and the Abberly and Malvern 

 Hills, the same rocks occur, largely associated with 

 coarse brecciated conglomerates, similar to those of the 

 Clent Hills. The fragments have mostly travelled from 

 a distance, apparently from the borders of Wales, and 

 some of them are three feet in diameter. In some cases 

 the smooth surfaces of the stones still retain striations, 

 identical in character with those found in ordinary 

 boulder-clay, or made by modern glaciers. Many of 

 the stones are of greenstone and felstone, apparently 

 derived from the Silurian traps of Montgomeryshire 

 and North Wales, and at the south end of the South 

 Staffordshire coal-field, near Northfield, I found in these 

 strata large slabs of Pentamerus limestone, such as are 

 only known in the Longmynd country, on the borders of 

 the Cambrian rocks in Shropshire. So completely, 

 indeed, does the whole deposit resemble the Post- 

 pliocene boulder-clay, that I have no doubt that there 

 was a glacial episode during part of the Permian epoch. 

 In Thuringia the conglomerates of the Rothliegende 

 have the same lithological character as the brecciated 



O 



conglomerates of the Abberly Hills and Clent Hills, 

 and they may be considered equivalents both in position 

 and origin. 



The chief part of the Permian fossils have been 



