A Ramble in West Shropshire. 189 



bosses of greenstone in the neighbourhood of the Stiperstones, 

 which indicate the existence in past times of great volcanic 

 heat, and there can be little doubt that, under the influence of 

 this, the origin of almost every physical result, a metamorphic 

 action took place in the already deposited rocks, and, by that 

 segregative force to which I have already alluded, some por- 

 tions assumed properties distinct from the strata in close con- 

 nection with them. 



We now are, at last, in the region of fossils. Near the top 

 of the Stiperstone ridge, and on the western flank, in the holes 

 scratched by the sheep to form for themselves a little shelter 

 in the bleak winter days, may be found fragments of trilobifces 

 and shells of very early types. Not sufficiently explored, 

 indeed, are these deposits ; but the task of doing so is difficult, 

 both from the remoteness of their locality and the few spots 

 at which any access can be obtained to them. 



From the lofty ridge on which we now suppose the 

 geologist to stand, he looks westward on an extensive undula- 

 ting country, chiefly consisting of what is called the Llandeilo 

 formation, and towards the south-west he sees, standing up 

 prominently out of the lower lands around it, the hill of 

 Corndon, a mass of greenstone or volcanic rock, representing 

 a vast upheaval of strata in its neighbourhood, and causing a 

 kind of V shaped arrangement of the intermediate beds, they 

 having been raised up both along the line of the Stiperstones, 

 on the one hand, and by the protrusion of the Corndon, on 

 the other. 



And here, for the present, we must leave our tourist 

 contemplating a scene which has, whenever I have had 

 the opportunity of surveying it, filled me with admiration. 

 The wild hillsides of the Stiperstone range, covered with bog 

 and heath, contrast well with the fertile country below ; the 

 gaunt mass of the Devil's Chair and other rocks, which at 

 intervals rear their forms boldly out of the crest of the ridge ; 

 Corndon in the distance, once perhaps, a glowing mass ; and, 

 according to Sir E. Murchison, volcanoes in full activity once 

 reared their peaks above the waters which covered the earth 

 when these enormous strata were being deposited. The evi- 

 dences of such mighty operations of nature, the cinders of the 

 vast forge in which the earth's crust has been moulded, may 

 well impress us with a sense of the powers which are in cease- 

 less action round us, and which have from all eternity, and 

 will to all eternity, evolve the purposes of the Creator. 



