FOSSTUFEROES PEBBLES IN THE BRIFT IN WARWICKSHIRE. 431 



of Ortliis hudleighensis in the altered quartz rock (Lower Silurian) 

 of Gorran Haven, Cornwall, shows that some of the Budleigh pebbles 

 were derived from there, which may be the case so far as regards 

 the Devonian area, but would hardly account for their presence so 

 much further to the north-east, in some parts of the Midland Coun- 

 ties for example. 



Therefore I suggested a more northerly or north-easterly exten- 

 sion of Old Silurian rocks, in which view my late lamented friend 

 Professor Phillips concurred. This would bring them much nearer 

 to that portion of England now forming the Midland District ; and 

 the destruction of those ancient palseozoic deposits may have largely 

 helped to supply the Bunter with pebbles, which were in later times, 

 by the denudation of the latter, washed into the ISew Red Sandstone 

 then forming. This, again, in its turn, was greatly attenuated, and 

 the pebbles, much reduced in bulk, finally distributed, with many 

 others derived from rocks of diverse ages and from all parts (north, 

 south, east and west, notably from the north), as Drift. 



With reference to the Bunter Conglomerate on the northern edge 

 of Cannock Chase, Professor Bonney, in a paper in the Geological 

 Magazine for September 1880, concludes, from a careful comparison 

 of the quartzite at Loch JSearn in Scotland, that many of the Staf- 

 fordshire Bunter pebbles were derived from the north-west of 

 Scotland. Other and different quartzites, he says, resemble more 

 closely those of Budleigh, the Lickey, and Hartshill. He found 

 Orthis hudleighensis in a pebble at Eugeley which was identi- 

 fied by Mr. Etheridge, and was, he states, lithologically and 

 zoologically identical with the Cornish and Budleigh specimens. 

 He also noticed a Rhynchonella. and probably Orthis calligramma. 

 In Mr. Percival's collection of pebbles from the Drift at Mose- 

 ley, Birmingham, in the Jermyn-Street Museum, the following 

 fossils are recorded — Orthoceras?, Cleidophorus amygddlis, Orthis 

 hudleighensis, StricJclandinia h/rata, Sjnrifera disjuncta, Glyjyto- 

 crinus, Petraia hina*. Professor Bonney is of opinion that the Lickey 

 largely contributed to the Bunter pebbles about Birmingham and 

 Bromsgrove. I quite agree with him in thinking that none of the 

 Midland-Counties pebbles came from South Devon, and with Prof. 

 Hull that very many have a northern origin; but there man}- others 

 in certain places, and notably in the area referred to in this paper, 



* Some time since, I looked over a miscellaneous collection of rocks presented 

 by Messrs Allport and Percival to the Midland Institute, obtained by them from 

 the Drift in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, chiefly from Moseley and other 

 places adjacent. There are many igneous and met amorphic rocks, basalt, gra- 

 nite, syenite, and hard crystalline pebbles, including agates, all of "which occur 

 at Rowington. The fossilif erous rocks are chiefly Carboniferous, including chert 

 with encrinite stems, probably from Derbyshire, several shells and corals and coal- 

 plants. There are few (if any) Llandovery species. There are some Orthides, 

 some of which occur in a dark-grey boulder very like the Snowdon rocks. 

 There are only a few quartz pebbles similar to those described in this paper ; 

 but I observed among them Orthis hudleighensis and Trachyderma serrata of 

 large size and well preserved, but certainly, taking the whole collection, not so 

 numerous as in the Drift in this district. 



