﻿102 BRITISH FOSSIL CRUSTACEA. 



11. — Old Red Sandstone (Lower Cornstones), Trimpley, near 



Kidderminster. 



Some years ago I accompanied Mr. George Roberts on an examination of the strata 

 exposed at Trimpley, two miles north-west of Kidderminster. I am not inclined to rank 

 these strata as Passage-beds, as some suppose them to be, but as true Lower Old Red 

 Cornstones. The lowest beds are seen at a place called Little Gayne. They are micaceous 

 shales, and Mr. Roberts showed me a collection of plant remains from these, associated with 

 the egg-packets of the Pterygotus {Parka decipiens). Portions of the carapace of this 

 Crustacean I saw myself in these flaggy shales. Above these strata there come on, 

 opposite the Church, a series of impure Cornstones, interstratified with greyish flagstones 

 exactly like the beds at Leyster's Pole, near Leominster, and those on the Bromyard Road, 

 north-west of the great Cradley Quarries, near Malvern, which have yielded so many fish- 

 remains to myself and others. These strata at Trimpley afforded numerous remains of 

 Pterygotus, Zeptoc/teles, Cephalaspis Lyellii, Pieraspis rostratus, and abundant plant 

 remains. The egg-packets of Pterygotus were more numerous than I ever saw them in 

 any other locality. 



12. — Old Red Sandstone (Lower Cornstones), near Cradley, Malvern. 



I have walked some hundreds of miles in my lifetime in endeavouring to discover a 

 section showing a good passage into these strata, but have not yet succeeded. The 

 ground is always more or less broken by faults, with a brook running on the line of fault, 

 or obscured more or less on the point of junction. I have, however, little doubt that the 

 beds at Trimpley, Leyster's Pole, near Leominster, and on the Bromyard Road near 

 Cradley, are on the same general horizon, that they lie considerably above the Passage- 

 beds proper, and are part and parcel of the Old Red Sandstone, whatever may be the 

 fossils which they and their allied Passage-beds have yielded. 



There are, or were, some years ago, two small quarries worked, one on the right and 

 the other on the left of the Bromyard Road (about a mile north-west of the great Cradley 

 quarry, on the summit of the hill, known as ' Cradley quarries '). These quarries are 

 worthy of note. The quarry on the right, or East, which is a little higher in the series 

 than that on the left, or West, has, on several occasions, yielded the remains of Ptery- 

 gotus. The mineral character of this rock is that of greyish flags with impure cornstone 

 concretions. Vegetable remains are nearly as abundant as they are at Trimpley, the beds 

 also contained ' Parka decipiens! Pteraspis, Scaphaspis, and Cephalaspis are found 

 here, and it was from this quarry that Mr. Ray Lankester obtained the specimen of 



