1855.] RAMSAY — PERMIAN BRECCIA. 201 



sea. On the Clent Hills and Bromsgrove Lickey the breccias are 

 from 800 to 900 feet above the sea-level ; and on the Abberley and 

 Malvern Ridge they are from 800 to 1000 feet high in their highest 

 positions. In none of the other places where they occur do the 

 breccias reach so great an elevation. There is, therefore, at present 

 no disparity so great between the relative elevations of the Longmynd 

 Range and the breccia as to induce a belief in the probability of ice- 

 bergs breaking away from glaciers on that old shore and floating in 

 the Permian seas ; but it must be recollected that in Britain great 

 disturbances of the strata have taken place since Permian times, and 

 in various places alluded to in this memoir the Permian strata dip at 

 all angles between 6° and 50°, so that their present relative elevations 

 give but little clue to their ancient physical relations. A general 

 tilting upwards of the country to the amount of 1° to the west would 

 raise the Stiper Stones from 1000 to 2000 feet higher above Abberley 

 Hill and Bromsgrove than they are at present ; and 2° or 3° would 

 double and treble this difference, and yet make no very sensible 

 change in the relative slopes of the ground. Apart, however, from 

 such speculations of mere tilting, there is one point which may 

 possibly bear upon the subject more directly, although I am not 

 inclined to attach too much value to the circumstance. A great fault 

 lies between the Longmynd and the Breccias on the east. Beginning 

 in the Upper Silurian rocks, near Gladestry in Radnorshire, it passes 

 to the north-east by Presteign, Bucknall, Hopesay, and Church 

 Stretton to x\cton Burnell, and from thence to the Severn, where it 

 splits and passes in two branches, one towards Uppington, the other 

 to the west side of the Wrekin, throwing down the Bunter Sand- 

 stone on the west for the last ten miles of its course. It is also a 

 downthrow of about 2000 feet on the west near Hopesay, and between 

 Hopesay and Church Stretton it varies from 1500 to 2000 feet. 



Affecting all the rocks from the Cambrian to the New Red Sand- 

 stone, this dislocation may possibly have had its throw increased at 

 different epochs ; but, assuming for the sake of argument that the 

 main throw happened after the close of the Permian period, by 

 annulling the fault, or in other words shifting up the Longmynd on 

 the west to the amount of the throw, we obtain a configuration of the 

 ground by which the relative levels of sea and land might have been 

 greatly modified during the Permian epoch. 



This naturally leads to another question. It will be remembered 

 that the Caradoc limestone (immediately underlying the Wenlock or 

 Pentamerus shale) rests directly and unconformably on the Longmynd 

 rocks ; and in a former memoir* I showed that, while the Caradoc and 

 Upper Silurian beds were being deposited, the land consisting of the 

 Longmynd and overlying Lower Silurian gradually sank and was en- 

 cased in a thick coating of all the Upper Silurian rocks ; and, seeing 

 that it is partly surrounded by high-lying outliers of Old Red Sand- 

 stone, it is more than probable that this formation may have been added 

 to the pile. The Wenlock and Ludlow rocks alone of this neighbour- 

 hood attain a thickness of 3000 feet. Now the Permian brecciated 

 * Quart. Journ. Gcol. Soc. vol. iv. p. 296. 



