New Red Sandstone. 569 



enclosed, that, were it not for the modern monastery 

 and the cowled monks who till the soil, it would almost 

 cease to be suggestive of the England of mediaeval 

 times, when wastes and forests covered half the 

 land. 



If we now pass to the Secondary rocks that lie in 

 the plains, we find a different state of things. In the 

 centre of England, formed of New Ked Sandstone and 

 Marl, the soils are for the most part naturally more 

 fertile than in the mountain regions of Cumberland and 

 Wales, or in some of the Palaeozoic areas in the ex- 

 treme south-west of England. When the soft New Red 

 Sandstone and especially the Marl are bare of drift, and 

 form the actual surface, they often decompose easily, 

 and form deep loams, save where the conglomerate beds 

 of the New Red Sandstone come to the surface. These 

 conglomerates consist to a great extent of gravels barely 

 consolidated, formed of water-worn pebbles of various 

 kinds, but chiefly of liver-coloured quartz-rock, like 

 that of some of the conglomerates of the old Red Sand- 

 stone, derived from some unknown region, and of sili- 

 cious sand, sometimes ferruginous. This mixture forms, 

 to a great extent, a barren soil. Some of the old waste 

 and forest lands of England, such as Sherwood Forest 

 and Trentham Park, part of Beaudesert, and the ridges 

 east of the Severn near Bridgnorth, lie almost entirely 

 upon these intractable gravels, or on other sands 

 of the New Red Sandstone, and have partly remained 

 uncultivated to this day. As land however becomes in 

 itself more valuable, the ancient forests are being cut 

 down and the ground enclosed. But a good observer 

 will often infer, from the straightness of the hedges, 

 that such ground has only been lately taken into culti- 

 vation, and at a time since it has become profitable to 



