Murchisori s Silurian System. 543 



Weobly Hills. There can, indeed, be no doubt, that the strata of 

 these two hilly ranges on the opposite banks of the river were once 

 continuous, because whenever the gravel has been removed, the cliffs 

 exhibit the red argillaceous beds. 



" Similar arrangements of strata are exhibited in the escarpments of 

 all the hills extending from Weobly to Leominster, and thence to 

 Tenbury and Bromyard ; the vast thickness of the formation, including 

 many masses of strong bedded sandstone, being remarkably well dis- 

 played in the hills crossed by the new road from Leominster to 

 Hereford. Wherever the marls have prevailed, the denudations have 

 been most extensive, as is remarkably exemplified in the lateral valleys 

 on the sides of the Pyons, two small conical hills probably saved from 

 destruction by the hardness of the concretionary rock and gritty 

 sandstones near their summits. 



"Nearly the whole of the central and northern parts of Herefordshire 

 and the contiguous parts of Salop and Worcestershire, are occupied by 

 this formation, those hills having best resisted denuding influences, 

 which contain the hardest concretion of cornstone, or the firmest ribs 

 of sandstone. In the northern portion of this range, the subordinate 

 limestones become thicker and more crystalline. 



" Bands of cornstone appear at intervals in all the country lying be- 

 tween the Clee Hills and the southern extremity of the coal-field of 

 Coalbrook Dale ; the same suite of beds forms also the base upon which 

 the greater part of the coal tracts of Billingsley and Forest of Wyre 

 have been deposited. At Lower Harcott, on the west side of Kinlett, 

 the cornstone dips south and south-south-west forty-five degrees, is 

 five or six feet thick, and is burnt for lime. It here "reposes upon a 

 good sandstone of greenish colour. This cornstone, as in other parts, 

 is of very irregular dimensions, contracting and expanding in the most 

 capricious manner. In one district only I have traced it on the east 

 bank of the Severn, where the existence of the old red sandstone had 

 not previously been noted in geological maps. 



" The formation is there displayed in a narrow and detached ridge on 

 the south side of the thin zone of coal measures of Arley and Shatter- 

 ford, ranging between these rocks and the new red sandstone of Wars 

 Hill and Horsley Bank, near Kidderminster. The old and new red 

 sandstones are in abrupt and unconformable junction on the sides of a 

 new cut in the road ascending from Kidderminster to Sbatterford gate, 

 near which beds of true cornstone are burnt for lime. These beds are 

 there clearly distinguishable from the calcareous bands of the adjacent 

 lower new red sandstone, by their unconformable position. 



