186 A Ramble in West Shropshire. 



the rest of the country, it is not surprising that its real merits 

 have been so much overlooked. Now, however, that even the 

 solitude of this remote region is penetrated by the railway, 

 and it is thus accessible to the civilized world, it may be not 

 unacceptable to those who, in their summer rambles, prefer 

 diverging from the well-worn track of the ordinary tourist, to 

 be informed of a few of the objects of interest to be found 

 there. 



The most interesting feature in this neighbourhood is its 

 geology. It is here possible to trace the history of some of 

 the earliest rocks which form the earth's crust. The traveller 

 by rail from Shrewsbury to Hereford will observe on his right, 

 in proceeding southwards from the former to the latter place, 

 a range of hills, at first low and undulating, but at last be- 

 coming a very picturesque and lofty tableland, with steep 

 almost precipitous sides. This is the Longmynd (long mount), 

 and has hitherto been reckoned the earliest water-formed 

 stratum of rock in England ; not, however, the earliest known 

 at all, since there is reason to believe that rocks of the same 

 age as these repose on still earlier, the so-called Lauren tian, 

 at Sutherland, and there is even a suspicion that a similar 

 fact may be observed in the neighbourhood of Malvern. How- 

 ever, here we see those ancient rocks — the lowest leaves in a 

 book — the aggregate thickness of which, in England alone, is 

 computed, by Professor Eamsay, to be some 14 miles, though 

 even this statement by no means expresses the vastness of the 

 deposits which make up the entire geological volume; there 

 being several breaks in the record — blanks in time, during 

 which, from various reasons, no deposits were made, or those 

 which had existed before were swept away. 



This range of hills attains its greatest altitude near the 

 extremely picturesque village of Church Stretton (so called 

 from being a town on the ancient Roman street which ran 

 through or close to it). A walk from this place westwards, 

 through the deep glens which intersect the hills, shows us at 

 many spots the highly inclined strata of the rock, and it is 

 possible to trace the same up the steep smooth sides of the 

 hills, wherever a course of sandstone, harder than the shale 

 with which it alternates, has resisted the action of the weather, 

 and forms a ridge. 



The almost vertical position of these strata, wherever they 

 can be examined for a distance of five or six miles, has enabled 

 Professor Ramsay to compute their thickness at no less than 

 26,000 feet. The lower beds are much contorted by pressure 

 of a peculiar kind, the layers of strata being puckered in ridges 

 in such a way as to suggest that they have been submitted 

 to an action similar to that which sometimes creases up the 



