Introductory. 3 



rising into isolated hills, capped by the yet more recent 

 Oolite. 



Still nearer, however, to my point of observation arc 

 these secondary deposits,for their western edge approaches 

 the PalEeozoic rocks not far from the foot of May Hill — 

 from me little more than a league off. 



Westward, and in fact all round me, extends the Old 

 Red Sandstone, the characteristic rock of Herefordshire, 

 as also the adjacent county of Monmouth. Its strata of 

 10,000 feet thickness — variously composed, and not all of 

 a red colour, as might be supposed by the misleading of 

 a name — in many places give evidence of the most violent 

 convulsion, their dip observable at angles of every degree. 

 Beyond doubt, throughout Herefordshire and Monmouth 

 the Old Red was once overlain by rocks of more recent 

 formation; certainly by the Carboniferous, whose seams 

 still cover it in the South Wales coalfield, the Glee Hills, 

 and Forest of Dean. Than this, to the geologist, there 

 is no more interesting district in England — I might say 

 in all the world. For within a remarkably limited circle 

 the view on one side embraces the whole of the upper and 

 lower Palgeozoic rocks, with all the Mezozoic, excepting 

 the Cretaceous; and on the other the Trias, Lias, and 

 Oolite ; while near by, on the west, lies the valley of the 

 Wye, rich in drifts of geological interest, and eastward 

 the wider and more extended valley of the Severn, itself 

 an ancient sea-bed. 



Turning southward, I have the Forest of Dean before 

 my face, a tract of country singular as it is celebrated. 

 It is, in point of fact, an elevated table-land, several 

 hundred feet above the level of the plains around, here 

 and there intersected by deep ravines, but on all sides 

 presenting a fagade, steep, almost precipitous. My 



