316 View from Malvern Hills. 



mountainous character, and let him look to the west : 

 then, as far as the eye can reach, he will see hill after 

 hill stretching into Wales (1 to 3, fig. 57); and if he 

 cast his eye to the north-east, he will there see what 

 seem in the distance to be interminable low undula- 

 tions, looking almost like perfect plains ; while to the 

 east and south-east there lies a broad low flat (6 to 8), 

 through which the Severn flows, bounded by a flat- 

 topped escarpment (9) facing west, and rising boldly 

 above the plain. This escarpment is formed of the 

 Oolitic formations, which constitute so large a part of 

 Gloucestershire. These, as the Cotswold Hills, form a 

 tableland, overlooking on the west a broad plain of 

 Lias Clay and of New Eed Marl, across which, on a clear 

 day, from the scarped edge of North Gloucestershire, far 

 to the west, we may descry the whole of the Malvern 

 range, the well-known clump of firs on the top of May 

 Hill near the Forest of Dean, and away to the north, 

 the distant smoke of Colebrook Dale. 



This remarkable Oolitic escarpment stretches, in a 

 more or less perfect form, from the extreme south-west 

 of England northward into Yorkshire (see Map). But 

 it is clear that the Oolitic strata could not have been 

 originally deposited in the scarped form they now pos- 

 sess, but once spread continuously over the plain far to 

 the west, and only ended where the Oolitic seas washed 

 the high land formed by the more ancient disturbed 

 Palaeozoic strata of Dartmoor, Wales, and the North of 

 England. Occasional outliers of Lias and Oolite attest 

 this fact, as, for example, in the large outlier of Lower 

 Lias and Marlstone between Adderley and the neigh- 

 bourhood of Whitchurch in Cheshire and Shropshire. 

 This outlier occupies an area of about 50 square miles, 

 and is at least 50 miles distant from the main mass of 



