VALUE OF COAL AND IRON IN THE TITTERSTONE CLEE FIELDS. 121 



the top of the Old Red Sandstone. The Oreton limestone, like that described p. 119, 

 is cut through by many transverse faults, on the side of which the strata are thrown 

 up at different angles of inclination and in devious directions, giving to the zone that 

 distorted outline seen upon the map. The Farlow Brook runs through the fissure pro- 

 duced by one of these faults, the limestone on its left bank being broken into separate 

 masses, one dipping west-south-west, another south, and at angles varying from 20° to 

 60°. However discordant these masses may be in regard to each other, they all repose 

 upon and dip away from the Old Red Sandstone, and pass beneath the unproductive coal 

 measures or millstone grit. In one of the quarries south of Oreton, the strata are sud- 

 denly snapped off, and a large mass of the rock being pitched at an angle of 70° to the 

 south-south-east, lies unconformably against the millstone grit of Oreton Common. 

 (PI. 30. fig. 1.) In the quarries east of the principal road, the beds are thrown round 

 and dip south-south- west at an angle of 45°. They are traversed by large fissures per- 

 pendicular to the planes of stratification, and the beds on each side of them are shifted 

 twelve to fifteen feet. 



Few organic remains can be detected in the fine oolitic beds, but those in the shale 

 and impure limestone are similar to the fossils of the Knowl or Clee Hill limestone. 

 Although the oolitic structure occasionally appears in the carboniferous limestone of 

 other parts of England, particularly near Bristol, I am not aware of any district which 

 offers such large and massive strata of this variety of rock. 



Such are the relations and structure of the carboniferous strata of the Titterstone 

 Clee Hills. These fields are of great economical value, supplying with coal a large sur- 

 rounding country, including the South of Shropshire, the North of Herefordshire, the 

 whole of Radnorshire, and other large portions of Wales. It is therefore of high import 

 to consider the probable quantity of unwrought coal remaining in them, particularly 

 when, as will be shown in the sequel, the geologist knows, that however extensively 

 the mineral may be discovered in other tracts upon the east, no bed of coal can ever be 

 found in any portion of that large adjacent territory of England and Wales which now 

 procures its fuel from these hills. (See Map and general section.) It has been already 

 stated that the Knowlbury and other works situated without the range of the basaltic 

 rock will very soon be exhausted, and that the chief mass of coal lies evidently beneath 

 the great sheet of basalt, extending from the Hoar Edge on the west to the eastern limits 

 of the Cornbrook works. In this large space there yet remains much untried ground, 

 and there is reason for inferring, that not only a sufficient supply for many ages yet 

 remains within the limits of Mr. Botfield's ground (that which lies to the east of the 

 great basaltic dyke), but that a very large mass of coal may exist under the Hoar Edge 

 to the west of that dyke, — points to which we shall specially advert in describing the 

 nature and position of the associated basalt. (See the next chapter.) 



The iron ores and the limestone with which they are associated, in these hills, are 



