40 Murcmsoris Silurian System. 



and green sandstone with calcareous conglomerate, dip to the 

 south-east, about four inches in a yard. 



This is indisputably one of the clearest natural sections 

 in the range of the Lower New Red Sandstone, exposing a 

 passage downwards to the coal measures. As these argilla- 

 ceous concretions are thus proved to belong to the Lower 

 New Red Sandstone, we thereby determine the age of other 

 sandstones, which distinctly overlying them, occur on both 

 banks of the Severn, at Hagley, Stanley, and Alveley, and 

 which most geologists, (myself included during my early 

 examinations of this tract,) erroneously considered to belong 

 to the Old Red Sandstone. Seeing the inter-stratification of 

 so many beds of stiff red clay with calcareous concretions 

 perfectly resembling the true cornstone of the Old Red, and 

 also beds in which the surfaces are occasionally covered with 

 large plates of mica, it was difficult to believe that these 

 rocks did not really belong to that system. By attention, 

 however, to the relations of these sandstones to the sur- 

 rounding strata, it becomes clear that they belong to the 

 New Red System ; for besides the proofs of their superposi- 

 tion in this tract, they may be traced pursuing the same 

 course, and uniting with the sandstones of Hagley, the Clent 

 Hills, Hales-Owen, and the strata which surround and 

 overlie the coal-fields of Coal-Brook Dale and Shrews- 

 bury. 



The Red Sandstone of Alveley, Hagley, and Stanley, which 

 contains calcareous concretions or cornstones, (several masses 

 of which are burnt for lime, is a thick-bedded sandstone, 

 without mica, the lamination frequently marked by purple 

 stripes, with here and there half-formed, small concretions 

 of green and red marl. The coarser, or gritty beds are 

 very largely quarried for grindstones, which are used at 

 Birmingham in the manufacture of gun barrels. The grind- 

 stones are not unusually three and a half feet thick, by ten 



