Border Country of Salop and North Wales ; Sgc. 257 



its strata, passes from the state of a coarse friable sandstone to that of an ag- 

 gregation of minute but perfectly regular siliceous crystals. The coarse fri- 

 able sandstone, reddened with oxyd of iron, and having an intermixture of 

 clay, occurs at the southern extremity of Leach Heath. In the greater part 

 of the range the sandy particles, instead of thus loosely cohering, are imbed- 

 ded in a pure quartz, the fracture of which is highly splendent and vitreous. 

 This rock is consequently very hard. Its usual colour is a smoke gray. Be- 

 sides the particles of sand, it contains white specks of decomposing felspar, 

 with scattered grains of malachite and of brown hematite. Its strata are 

 marked by the same curved swelling surfaces, which were noticed in Powis 

 Park near Welchpool. By its numerous cleavages, crossing the direction of 

 its strata, it is divided into irregular trapezoidal masses : but its fragments are 

 occasionally found approaching to the more exact rhomboidal forms of common 

 grauwacke. Its strata are sometimes separated by thin beds of clay, which 

 are either of a light green colour, or more commonly of a deep red. Some- 

 times these seams of clay are unctuous to the touch, and occasionally they 

 pass into steatite. Some portions of the hills, though of rare occurrence, con- 

 sist of worn angular fragments of the quartz-rock imbedded in a cement, 

 which is softer and more argillaceous, but which belongs to the same forma- 

 tion and is of the same general nature with the whole mass of the hills. The 

 numerous quarries throughout the range aiford good opportunities of seeing 

 its stratification, which varies exceedingly in its direction, being sometimes 

 nearly horizontal, sometimes vertical, and frequently more or less curved. A 

 remarkable example of the curvature of the strata was exhibited a few years 

 since in a quarry near the S. E. extremity of the range beside the road to 

 Tardebig. The strata were here seen covering a globular mass of soft mica- 

 ceous shale, unctuous to the touch, highly ferruginous, and with its laminae 

 conformable to the stratification of the incumbent quartz-rock. Through 

 a thickness of two or three feet the quartz-rock was ferruginous, very com- 

 pact, and of the same deep red colour vf'xih the shale, thus passing into the 

 state of the grauwacke of the region to the westward. Fig. 4. of PI. XXVII. 

 is designed to show the position of the strata at this spot, and the mass of dark 

 red micaceous shale, on which they were incumbent. 



The compact quartz-rock, which has now been described, forms the great 

 mass of the lower Lickey range. Its crystalline structure is often more or less 

 apparent, and shows, that while its particles of sand, &c. were mechanically 

 suspended, the siliceous base, in which they are imbedded, must have been in 

 a state of solution in the same fluid. But the most complete proofs of this 

 fact are presented in that portion of the range which has been already men- 



2l2 



