CARADOC SANDSTONE OF THE MALVERN RANGE. 



415 



thick. Much encrinital shale is also associated with the flags quite similar to that of Cowley Park 

 Wood, Alfric Pound, &c. The calcareous and hard flagstone beds were cut to about fifteen feet in 

 depth for the construction of the Park Wall at Eastnor. The rifts and veins are filled with pink 

 calcareous spar, and the flags are usually split transversely into irregular squares like the surface 

 of a chess-board. The flaglike arrangement of these beds, and the absence of concretions, places 

 them in striking contrast to those of the Wenlock formation. The fossils which mark this upper 

 member of the Caradoc formation at Stump's Wood in Eastnor Park, consist of three species of 

 Orthocera, Pentamerus Icevis, Lingula lata, &c. the two last-mentioned fossils occurring in the 

 same zone near Buildwas, and at the Hollies in Shropshire. 



The sandy or central mass of the formation is seen at the southern termination of the Martley 

 Hills, rising into the still loftier Hill of Ankerdine, the highly inclined strata of which dip both to 

 the west and east, with the exception of a slight trace of the bottom of the overlying group of Wen- 

 lock shale. On its north-western face this rock constitutes the only division between the Old Red 

 Sandstone of Hereford, and the New Red of Worcester. (PI. 29. f. 4.) At Ankerdine Hill the 

 formation is charged with the casts of the Atrypa hemisphcerica (Dalm.), PI. 20. f. % t3 Terebratula 

 decemplicata (Nob.), PI. 21. f. I 1 ]., and other fossils. 



In the thick-bedded grit on the eastern slopes of this hill, are impressions of what are supposed 

 to be fucoids ; but they are extremely imperfect and cannot be strictly identified by any botanist who 

 has seen them. This grit is made up of an intimate mixture of fine grains of white quartz and 

 pink felspar, while the rents and faces of the stone, as well as the cavities which give the form of the 

 above plants, are slightly coated by a film of hydrate of iron. The colour is a dingy purple. This 

 formation is lost from Ankerdine Hill (its most northerly extension) to a point three miles south 

 of the Teme, when it reappears in the dome- shaped hill of Old Storridge, throwing off to the west 

 the younger formations above described. (PI. 36. f. 6.) It is thence prolonged by Rough Hill 

 to Cowley Park Woods, near which it is interfered with by small protrusions of syenite. After 

 being cut out and deflected from its south- south- easterly strike by the great body of the intrusive 

 rock, only a few of the upper beds are seen, as in a new road on the flank of the chain east of 

 Mathon Lodge, till we reach the northern end of Eastnor Park. (See Section, PI. 36. f. 7.) Here, 

 the strike being reversed, or to the south- south-west, (in conformity with that of the overlying 

 formations), the Caradoc sandstone is expanded, ranging along the Obelisk Hill, and occupying 

 the whole of Howler's Heath, where it terminates in another dome-shaped mass, similar to Storridge 

 Hill. It is here flanked on the south by the New Red Sandstone. 



In this course the Caradoc formation, as in Shropshire, exhibits in descending order, first a bastard 

 limestone charged with encrinites, &c, and next a zone of thin-bedded, flaggy, greenish-grey sand- 

 stones, alternating with shale ; in some places, as near Merry Hill, very hard and siliceous; in others, 

 as in the Obelisk Hill of Eastnor, soft and fragile. In some of these flags are the same fossils as 

 near Acton Scott and Hope Bowdler in Salop. (See List.) In a lower zone of the formation, (at 

 the Paper-mill west of Old Storridge Hill), we have quartzose calcareo-grits, similar in composition 

 to those of Nash Hill near Presteign, and of Horderley in Salop, and which like them contain the 

 same casts of Pentamerus oblongus, and the prevalent corals. 



Other beds near the Obelisk at Eastnor are dingy purple sandstones, undistinguishable from 

 many described in this formation in Shropshire. In these beds are not only casts, but even shells 

 themselves; one of them is the Nucula Eastnori, (nobis), PI. 20. f. 1. Some of the coarse grits 

 of this formation in Old Storridge Hill, and also at Howler's Heath, are remarkably hard, thick- 

 bedded, and contain much felspar in small grains : a very felspathic variety occurs on the flank of 



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