A Day with the Field-Clubs. 399 



England, but are eccentric enough in the specimens from 

 Canada and Bohemia; while orthis of many species, stropho- 

 mena expansa of large size, tentaculites, leptoena sericea, 

 and many other shells, were easily found, along with joints of 

 encrinites and fragments of the beautifully-dotted trinucleus 

 Caractaci, a perfect specimen of which is rarely met with. This 

 spot presents the Caradoc strata in their simplest form, 

 unaltered by heat or distortion, and left behind by the vast force 

 of igneous action which has raised the same rocks in an altered 

 slaty condition to the summit of Snowdon, and hj which also 

 this picturesque chain of hills which we were now going to 

 visit, and of which Caer Caradoc is the chief, was protruded. 

 The work of geological hammers was suspended for a 

 moment to listen to a popular lecture on these Silurian rocks 

 by the excellent Yicar of Stokesay, the Rev. J. D. La Touche, 

 one of the most active leaders of the field- club movement in 

 Shropshire, and to some further remarks by Mr. Lightbody, 

 the eminent geologist of Ludlow ; after which we proceeded to 

 retrace our steps in the direction of Caer Caradoc. 



At Hope Bowdler the party had been joined by those 

 members of the Severn Valley Club who had driven across 

 the country in carriages of various descriptions, and it had 

 now become numerous, amounting, as it was said, in all, to 

 about a hundred and eighty, of which a considerable majority 

 consisted of ladies. We may well suppose that such a sudden 

 invasion of the hill districts must have caused no little surprise 

 among its scattered population ; and this was displayed in one 

 or two rather amusing incidents. At one place in the road, an 

 old woman and her husband, looking out from their cottage 

 door, expressed their views on the subject loud enough to be 

 very distinctly heard. ' ' Who may they folk be, dun ye think V 

 asks Darby of his faithful Joan. " Oh \" replies Joan, who was 

 evidently of a literary turn of mind, " why, they be the pilgrims 

 you read of in books, sure enough they be a-going a pil- 

 grimage/'' In fact, she took us for some of the numerous 

 personages immortalized in the pages of the "Pilgrim's Pro- 

 gress." And one of our fair companions afterwards remarked 

 that we had indeed come to " the Hill Difficulty," and con- 

 fessed to having found it "very toilsome in the ascent, and 

 somewhat slippery." 



Towards this difficult hill the whole party now proceeded, 

 as the special object of this meeting was to study the curious 

 and instructive dislocations of the earth's crust which were 

 there brought to view. On the way, specimens of almost every 

 variety of igneous material were met with among the debris 

 rolled down from the sides of the mountains — porphyries, hard 

 and bright-coloured as those of Egypt ; red and grey jaspers, 



