LOWER NEW RED, STAFFORDSHIRE. 



57 



from these hills of yellow sandstones, to the edge of the great Dudley coal-field, whether 

 from the Windmills and Two Gates, or from Hodge Hill, we find the following suc- 

 cession : 



1st. Beds of incoherent soft yellow sandstone, with calcareous courses and thin seams and fragments 

 of coal. 



2nd. Argillaceous strata, generally red, and of considerable thickness. 



3rd. Sandstone, alternating with a peculiar trap-tuf. This rock sometimes assumes spheroidal forms, 

 and will be further described in the chapter on Dudley. It contains quartz pebbles, and 

 fragments of coal plants, is often highly ferruginous, and passes down into strata containing 

 small concretions of ironstone. 



4th. Calcareous shale with seams of coal, which have been, and are still worked. (See PI. 37- fig. 6.) 



It appears, therefore, that between Hagley and Hales Owen, there are all the proofs 

 of a Lower New Red Sandstone, distinctly underlying the masses described in the pre- 

 vious pages, and passing down into carboniferous strata so gradually, that it is difficult 

 to draw the line of separation, or define it with any accuracy upon a map. As this 

 Lower New Red approaches the Clent Hills, it is inclined to the south, and is there 

 surmounted by the calcareous conglomerate or central and upper strata of the New 

 Red System. At whatever point we fix the limit between the overlying sandstones 

 and the coal measures, it must be borne in mind, that the only carboniferous strata into 

 which these beds graduate in this immediate neighbourhood, constitute the poor and 

 slightly productive end of the Dudley field, and that speculation in search of coal seams 

 by sinking to great depths beneath the Lower New Red in this tract, would be quite 

 ruinous, since we know, that the mineral thins out to mere shreds in its course to the 

 south. (See sections, PI. 37. figs. 7 and 8. and further explanations of this point in the 

 chapter upon the Dudley coal-field.) In following the margin of the great Staffordshire 

 coal-field we invariably find, that wherever gravel and superficial detritus does not 

 obscure the relations of the strata, a zone of red sandstone, sometimes of considerable 

 thickness, is interposed between the coal and the calcareous conglomerate. At the Stand 

 Hills, it is a hard, greyish, partially reddish, and slightly calcareous sandstone, with 

 a few blotches of yellowish marl, and some veins of white carbonate of lime, passing 

 upwards into a pebbly, deep red, soft sandstone. At the Straits between Himley and 

 Turner's Hill, it is a thick-bedded, deep red, soft sandstone, in parts slightly calcareous, 

 full of irregular joints, and those numerous transverse striae or lines of false bedding so 

 common in the New Red Sandstone, with occasional lumps of harder calcareous grit. 

 At Sedgely, it is a hard, red, slightly calcareous sandstone, with spots of green, passing 

 upwards into red argillaceous marl. These localities are all on the west side of the field, 

 and the strata invariably dip to the west, or from the underlying coal measures 1 . 

 On the eastern side of the coal-field, these sandstones are much more obscured by 



1 See also the section from Wolverhampton to the banks of the Severn north of Bridgenorth, PI. 29. fig. 13. 



