FOREST OF WYRE AND TITTERSTONE CLEE HILL COAL FIELDS. 1071 



There remains, however, the question of the age of part of the sandstone-series 

 above. Both in Titterstone Clee and in the Forest of Wyre the lowest beds of this 

 series have yielded no plants, and their junction with the clay-series below is not 

 exposed. In the second coal field, however, the sandstones at a higher level have 

 yielded a Staffordian flora (see p. 1032). The position, therefore, is this : the clay- 

 series (a), from the Gutter Coal, is Westphalian, at least up to about the level of 

 the Great Coal of Clee Hill inclusive ; but above this no definite evidence of age is 

 forthcoming until a level well up in the sandstone-series (b) is reached, where the 

 flora in Wyre Forest is Staffordian. In the intervening measures a non-sequence, or 

 even an unconformity, may have been passed over, but no field evidence of such a 

 break has been obtained. It would naturally be sought at the junction of the clays 

 with the sandstones. But this junction appears to be a conformity ; its outcrop, 

 when followed, maintains its distance from that of the Sweet Coals in the clay-series 

 below ; and the features that mark it vary, as though the individual sandstone bands 

 along it were impersistent. Further : sandstones, precisely similar to those above, are 

 intercalated among the clays below, occurring even below the coals, the Westphalian 

 age of which is certain. The clay-series and the sandstone-series therefore appear to 

 form one conformable sequence, and at present the relations of the Westphalian and 

 the Staffordian to one another and to the lithological divisions are uncertain. 



Finally, it may be remarked that the parallelism between the lithological divisions 

 a and b on the one hand and the sequence Etruria Marls-Halesowen Sandstone on 

 the other, though illusory for purposes of correlation, is sufficiently close to show 

 that during Coal Measure times the physiographic changes which in North Stafford- 

 shire initiated the Etruria Marls commenced over the Titterstone Clee-Forest of 

 Wyre area at a distinctly earlier period. 



FOSSIL PLANTS OF THE TITTERSTONE CLEE HILL COAL FIELD. 



The earliest records of fossil plants from this Coal Field are those given by 

 Lindley and Hutton in their Fossil Flora. 



Sphenopteris polyphylla L. & H. 



1835. Sphenopteris polyphylla, L. & H., Fossil Flora, vol. ii, p. 185, pi. cxlvii. 

 1892. „ ,, Kidston, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin., vol. xi, p. 239, pi. ix, 



figs. 2, 2a, 2c. 



In a note appended to this species, the authors of the Fossil Flora say, when 

 referring to a collection made by Sir Roderick Murchison from the " Knowlsbury 

 Coal Field," that the specimens " occur chiefly in the roof of the ' Great Coal,' and 

 ' Gutter Coal.' ' : This to a certain extent fixes the horizon of this specimen. Since 

 Lindley and Hutton's time Sphenopteris polyphylla has not been again met with. 



The type is now preserved in the Geological Department of the British 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. LI, PART IV (NO. 27). 151 



