NEW RED SANDSTONE IN SHROPSHIRE. 



39 



their superficial green colour to the presence of a lichen. The existence of copper ore 

 in rocks of the same age is well known in Cheshire, both in the Peckforton Hills and 

 in Alderley Edge. Since I last visited Shropshire, copper ore has likewise been found, 

 and works have been opened in the New Red Sandstone near Pradoe, on the property 

 of the Hon. Thomas Kenyon. Specimens of the rock sent to me by Colonel Wingfield, 

 indicate the dissemination of the green carbonate, in minute quantities through the 

 mass of sandstone. At the Peckforton Hills I examined the trial shafts of the old mine 

 in company with the proprietor, Sir Philip Egerton, Bart., and there the ore unques- 

 tionably lies in veins and lumps, where the sandstone is dislocated and fissured. Further 

 allusion, however, will be made to this subject and to the mineralized character of these 

 sandstones, after the description of certain trap dykes which penetrate the New Red 

 Sandstone of Shropshire. 



Mr. A. Aikin, with his usual mineralogical precision, had remarked, more than twenty 

 years ago, that the rocks of Hawkstone were analogous to those of Alderley Edge, in 

 containing traces of copper ore, ferruginous oxide of cobalt, together with concretions 

 and veins of sulphate of barytes. These minerals were at that day held to be eminently 

 characteristic of the Old Red Sandstone, having been cited by Werner as occurring 

 abundantly in the older Red Sandstones of Germany; but we now know that these 

 older German Sandstones (the rothe todte liegende) , are not of greater antiquity than 

 those which form the lower part of the New Red System. 



At Clive Hill, the highest part of the Broughton ridge before mentioned, and rising 

 from beneath the calcareous courses supposed to represent the Muschelkalk, Mr. Arthur 

 Aikin first observed "round concretions of fine sand, firmer than the surrounding 

 matrix and much heavier, consisting of quartzy sand, cemented by sulphate of barytes, 

 their size varying from the bulk of an apple to that of a pea. These concretions, being 

 harder and less easily decomposable than the rest of the rock, project from its weathered 

 surface and often become quite loose in the incoherent sand to which the rock is re- 

 duced 1 ." Dark-coloured quartzose conglomerates rise from beneath these sandstones 

 in the hills at Hodnet; and if we continue the section in direct descending order, from the 

 escarpment at Hawkstone on the north, to the plains of Shrewsbury on the south, we 

 pass through other and older strata of this group of the formation, composed of red 

 sandstones, and much stiff red marl or clay. (See section, PL 29. fig. 3.) 



The Clive and Grinshill Hills are the south-western prolongations of the Hawk- 

 stone sandstones. The cliff at Grinshill exhibits the peculiar feature of a face of sixty- 

 five to eighty feet, of a fine-grained, whitish sandstone, included between two masses of 

 a red colour, the overlying stratum being a rubbly, thin -bedded red rock called "Fee;" 

 the underlying mass, a deep-coloured red sandstone, which has been bored through in 

 search of water to the depth of upwards of two hundred and twenty feet, without afford- 

 ing any sensible difference in its composition. The red cap, or " Fee," is mere refuse 

 or marly sandstone, and the red sandstone at the base of the hill is simply a soft thick- 



i MSS. of Mr. Aikin. 

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