SEDGWICK ON THE MAY HILL SANDSTONE. 221 



well-preserved and clearly distinguishable ; two of the remaining three 

 are such imperfect casts that I can but doubtfully indicate them. 

 One of these two and the third {Strophomena simulans and Pentamerus 

 lens) occur at Malvern also with Wenlock fossils. The shell which 

 I figured (Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland) under the name 

 Spirifer ovatus has been found by Mr. Salter to be identical with 

 the distorted cast named S. liratus by Sowerby, and I now can 

 prove it, from the May Hill specimens, to be the exterior of the Penta- 

 merus lens. The Orthis Bavidsoni is an exclusively Wenlock lime- 

 stone species described by MM. Davidson and De Verneuil, con- 

 founded in this country with the totally different Orthis flab ellulwm 

 of the true Caradoc sandstone and inferior beds. With the exception 

 of the three doubtful species alluded to, there is no fossil in the above 

 list which is not well knoion in the Wenlock limestones, and some of 

 them are peculiar to it." (Professor M'Coy.) 



In this list there is, then, no admixture of those peculiar types 

 which are respectively supposed to characterize the two great divi- 

 sions (Cambrian and Silurian) of the older Palaeozoic series. It is a 

 true and characteristic Wenlock list, and whatever reasons there may 

 be for grouping the Woolhope beds with the Wenlock series, the 

 same reasons apply, with all their force, to the May Hill fossiliferous 

 sandstones ; and vpith perfect propriety they might be named Wen- 

 lock grit or Wenlock sandstone. For the present, however, I would 

 call them May Hill sandstone, and unquestionably separate them 

 from the well-known sandstone between Caer Caradoc and the great 

 terrace of Wenlock Edge. And let me here remark, that whenever, 

 in this paper, I use the words Caradoc sandstone, without any ex- 

 planatory phrase, I mean to designate a group like that of Horderley 

 or Caer Caradoc, containing the well-known fossils of the great upper 

 Cambrian or Bala group. With this limitation, the true Caradoc 

 fauna is very vpidely distinct from the fauna of the May Hill sand- 

 stone : and the term Caradoc is thus limited to strata which are the 

 true equivalents of those which first suggested the name — Caradoc 

 sandstone. Whether, in the centre of the dome of May Hill, there 

 may not be some older beds with a different group of fossils, is a 

 point we had no means of determining, and I write only from the 

 evidence now before me. 



Sections on the West Side of the Malvern Hills. 



Some of these sections are very complicated, and the great merit 

 of first reducing them to order is due exclusively to the author of the 

 ' Silurian System.' In the elaborate and excellent survey of the Mal- 

 vern Hills and the neighbouring districts (published in the Memoirs of 

 the Government Geological Survey in 1848, nearly ten years after the 

 first appearance of the ' Silurian System'), Professor Phillips made 

 some important corrections of, and additions to, the original published 

 sections. These corrections were not, however, of such a nature as 

 to detract from, but rather to add to, the great merit of the original 

 survey ; and he seems to have been so much under the influence of 

 this sentiment, as to have retained the original nomenclature of " the 



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