FOREST OF WYRE AND TITTERSTONE CLEE HILL COAL FIELDS. 1015 



Coals. That the thick series of red marls worked for blue bricks at 

 Aldridge, Oldbury, and Old Hill in South Staffordshire is not present as 

 such in the Wyre Forest district must be admitted. But the series may 

 nevertheless be present in a more arenaceous form. What is needed to 

 settle this question is a determination of the upper limit of the Westphalian 

 (Middle Coal Measure) flora. If this flora extends upward to the base of 

 the Sulphur Coal Group, it follows that either (l) the Sulphur Coal Group 

 represents the Etruria Marls (as Dr Arber seems to suggest) or the Etruria 

 Marls plus the Halesowen Sandstones, or (2) the Sulphur Coal Group is 

 unconformable to the Sweet Coal Group, and the Etruria Marls are absent 

 through overlap or overstep. Toward the solution of this problem the 

 so-called Alton No. 1 bore-hole has afforded no better help than the exposures 

 at Cooper's Mill, close by, which have shown that the surface-beds are 

 Middle Coal Measures. If any of the beds that intervene between the 

 Cooper's Mill horizon and the Main Sulphur Coal at Kingswood ultimately 

 prove to contain a Transition (Staffordian) flora, these beds may be the 

 equivalents of the Etruria Marls. The Sulphur Coal Group with its 

 Spirorbis-limestoiie would then fall naturally into place as the representative 

 of the Halesowen Sandstones. 



9. It is not easy to understand why Dr Arber regards the absence at Claverley 



of workable coals and ironstones as inconsistent with the correlation of 

 Claverley with South Staffordshire (op. cit., p. 430), while admitting that 

 the totally barren measures of the Dowles Valley are of the same Middle 

 Coal Measure age as the Sweet Coal Series — rich in coals and ironstones — 

 of Highley and the similarly productive measures of South Staffordshire 

 (op. cit., p. 376). The statement (p. 430) that no plant-remains were ob- 

 tained from the Halesowen Sandstones at Claverley is clearly an oversight. 



10. The suggestion that the workable coals of Highley are equivalent to those 



Dr Arber calls the upper coals at Shatterford is inconsistent with the fact 

 that the latter are sulphur coals, and with the theory that they belong to 

 the Sulphur Coal Group, though this theory needs testing by the evidence 

 of the plants. 



11. Dr Arber's demand for separate coal fields is unconvincing. The so-called 



separate coal fields appear to be in some cases separate basins of deposition, 



in others separate tectonic areas as determined by inter-Carboniferous or 



post-Carboniferous folding and denudation. 



Taking 1 and 2 together, while we may admit that at Bridgnorth the 



Middle Measures of Coalbrookdale are not continuous at their outcrop with 



the Middle or Sweet Coal Measures of the Highley region, no evidence is 



produced to show that the same want of connection holds good farther east, 



beneath the cover of Keele Beds and Trias. 

 TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. LI, PART IV (NO. 27). 144 



