Vol. 68.] THE PBDWAKDINE INLIER. 367 



Similar conglomerates and grits are seen at various other small 

 exposures over an area extending for about a mile in a southerly 

 direction. At some of these exposures there is a tendency for the 

 grits to become more quartzose ; microscope-slides show a consider- 

 able outgrowth of secondary quartz from the quartz-grains, but the 

 rock can never be termed a true quartzite. 



The ground occupied by the outcrop of these grits tends to be 

 very hummocky in character, and the site is often covered by trees. 

 The grits have at one time been quarried in Brampton Bryan Park 

 and around Upper Pedwardine for use in the neighbouring walls 

 and buildings, but the workings, long abandoned, are now almost 

 completely overgrown. 



These Brampton Grits and Conglomerates appear to be quite 

 unfossiliferous, no trace of an organism having been discovered at 

 any of the exposures. Stratigraphical evidence as to the age of 

 these beds is also unfortunately absent, as their outcrop is bounded 

 on all sides by faults. On one side, as will appear later, they seem 

 to be thrust horizontally over Dictyonema Shales. 



Field evidence and direct palaeontological evidence both being 

 absent, there remains only the lithology to afford any clue as to 

 the age of these Brampton Beds. 



As previously noted. La Touche ^ speaks of the ' Cambrian grits 

 and pre-Cambrian rocks of Brampton Brian Park/ Now, all the 

 Brampton Beds belong evidently to a single series, it being quite 

 impossible to make any line of division, based either on the lithology 

 or on any other of the field-characters. 



Lithologically these beds do not resemble any of the Cambrian 

 grits and sandstones (Comley Sandstones) that I have seen in 

 Shropshire. They find their nearest lithological equivalents in some 

 of the beds of the Longmyndian outcrop at Hopesay, which lies some 

 7 miles north of Pedwardine. Moreover, in the main Longmynd 

 area almost exactly similar beds are seen in the conglomerates 

 of Stanbach.^ The Stanbach conglomerates form a part of the 

 Bayston Group, which is the lowest member of the Upper (or Bed) 

 division of the Longmyndian.^ 



The possibility of the strata of this Brampton series being of Bala 

 age is at once excluded by the fact that, within a few yards of them 

 we find rocks which, as will be shown later on, I consider to be of 

 Bala age, differing markedly from the Brampton Beds in field 

 characters as well as in direction of dip. 



From their position between Cambrian and Wenlock and from the 

 sinuous outcrop of their junction with the underlying Cambrian, it 

 might be supposed that these Brampton Grits are Llandovery Beds 

 resting un conformably upon the Dictyonema Shales.^ This, however, 



^ ' Handbook to the Geology of Shropshire ' 1884, p. 25. 



^ I am indebted to Prof. C. Lapworth, to whom I submitted hand-specimens 

 from Pedwardine, for calling my attention to their resemblance to these 

 Stanbach conglomerates. 



^ 0. Lapworth & W. W. Watts, ' Shropshire,' in ' Geology m the Field ' 

 (Geol. Assoc. Jubilee vol.) 1909-10, p. 748. 



^ The whole area is coloured as Llandovery on the 1-inch map. 



