60 



LOWER NEW RED, SHROPSHIRE. 



seams of coal (Borle-brook) . The descending order on the western slope of Chelmarsh 

 common is as follows : See PL 30. figs. 1. and 4. 



1. Red sandstones passing into calcareous conglomerates, sometimes of concretionary structure, 



(summit of ridge from Chelmarsh to Higley) . 



2. Argillaceous marls and clay, with beds of whitish sandstone, occasionally with green grains. 



3. First traces of coal measures, viz. dark and grey shale and light-coloured sandstone, with seams 



of coal, too poor to be worked. 



4. Top coal of this district, tiventy-two inches thick, the highest bed in use. 



5. Calcareous concretions of grey and green colours, resembling certain varieties of the cornstone 



of the Old and New Red Systems ; a band of this limestone is seen in the bed of the Borle- 

 brook dipping under the top coal. 



6. Lower coal, two feet six inches thick, with associated measures, lies at some depth beneath the 



limestone, but is not now in work. 

 All these beds, from the lower coal to the overlying red and green sandstone with calcareous 

 conglomerate, dip to the south east, about four inches in a yard 1 . 



This is indisputably one of the clearest natural sections in the range of the Lower 

 New Red Sandstone, exposing a passage downwards to the coal measures. As these 

 argillaceous beds with calcareous concretions, are thus proved to belong to the Lower 

 New Red Sandstone, we thereby determine the age of other sandstones, which di- 

 stinctly overlying them, occur on both banks of the Severn, at Higley, Stanley, and 

 Alveley, and which most geologists, (myself included during my early examinations of 

 this tract,) erroneously considered to belong to the Old Red Sandstone. Seeing the 

 interstratification of so many beds of stiff red clay, with calcareous concretions per- 

 fectly resembling the true cornstones of the Old Red, and also beds in which the sur- 

 faces are occasionally covered with large plates of mica, it was difficult to believe that 

 these rocks did not really belong to that System. By attention, however, to the 

 relations of these sandstones to the surrounding strata, it becomes clear, that they 

 belong to the New Red System; for besides the proofs of their superposition in this 

 tract, they may be traced pursuing the same course and uniting with the sandstones 

 of Hagley, the Clent Hills, Hales Owen, and the strata which surround and overlie the 

 coal-fields of Coal Brook Dale and Shrewsbury. 



Grindstones. The red sandstone of Alveley, Higley, and Stanley, which contains 

 calcareous concretions or cornstones (several masses of which are burnt for lime at Low 

 and Shropshire farms) is a thick-bedded sandstone, without mica, the lamination fre- 

 quently marked by purple stripes, with here and there, half-formed, small concretions 

 of green and red marl. The coarser or gritty beds are very largely quarried for grind- 

 stones, which are used at Birmingham in the manufacture of gun-barrels. The grind- 



1 The Rev. T. England first made known this section, and showed the existence of concretionary cornstones 

 in these coal measures. Geol. Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 20. 



