HOLL —MALVERN HILLS. 87 



the trap-rocks were consolidated to the entire depth of the fissures, 

 and while, therefore, they were yet weak points in the earth's crust. 



Besides the brecciated structure exhibited by some of the trappean 

 masses already mentioned, especially towards their margins, there 

 occur in many parts of the hills narrow bands of breccia formed by 

 the filling up of fissures with fragments from tb.e various adjacent 

 rocks. These long narrow bands indicate lines of fault, and affect 

 the traps as well as the other rocks ; in the former, in fact, the 

 brecciated structure is often better displayed than elsewhere. They 

 occur throughout the range, especially in the three southernmost 

 hills, near the Wind's Point, and in the vicinity of the Wych. One 

 of them may be seen crossing the pathway immediately to the west 

 of St. Ann's Well, and a much larger one, nearly nine yards in width, 

 by the roadside leading to the Wych, opposite Furze Bank. This 

 latter traverses the range from south-east to north-west, and has 

 been well exposed in the cutting-back of the hill to widen the road. 

 The great longitudinal fault, which extends the entire length of the 

 range on its eastern side, is filled up with similar fragments derived 

 from the rocks of the hills, and in some parts attains a width of 

 many yards. 



These faults, although of very frequent occurrence, can rarely be 

 traced to any distance, owing to the want of exposures ; but, where 

 no line of breccia occurs, we may still often ascertain the existence 

 of a fault by the abrupt change in the direction of the strike of the 

 beds. They probably belong to various epochs ; some of them are 

 certainly posterior in age to the traps, while others are subsequent 

 to the Upper Silurian period, and the one at the eastern foot of the 

 range is more recent than the Lias. 



Some of these fissures, whether filled with trap-rock forming 

 dykes or with breccia, lie in the plane of the bedding, for the reason, 

 probably, that these schistose rocks fractured more readily in that 

 direction than across it. 



III. Uppee Cambrian Eocks. 



1. Hollyhush Sandstone. — The oldest fossiliferous beds resting upon 

 the crystalline rocks of the Malvern hills are a series of sandstones, 

 for the most part of olive and brownish-green colours, which have 

 been long known to contain TracJiyderma antiquissima, but which 

 has hitherto been supposed to be their only fossil ; and hence the exact 

 position of these sandstones in the geological scale has been some- 

 what uncertain. At the base of the series there is a conglomerate 

 of rounded pebbles of quartz, felspar, &c., which is visible on the 

 south side of the turnpike-road, near a cottage at the foot of the 

 western spur of the liagged-stone Hill* ; and about halfway up, there 

 are some beds of contemporaneous volcanic lava, which form lenti- 

 cular intercalations nearly, though not quite, on the same geological 

 horizon. Between these two points the beds consist partly of light- 

 coloured felspathic sandstones and of speckled sandstone containing 



* Noticed also by Phillips, op. cit. p. 52. 



