434 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



the bye, tlian gravel, and at Upper Arley, where there is a grand 

 cutting throngh thirty feet of these gravel and sand deposits, on the 

 railway, worth going miles to see, even if the collector of ancient 

 life-remains unsuccessfully searches for the common v/helk {Buccimim 

 unclatum), which has been found with fragments of other sea-shells 

 among the smaller pebbles, just as they were left by a retiring wave. 

 And here, too, in lines of shoal-sand, exposed in the face of the cut- 

 ting, may be seen black "pockets," partly filled with carbonaceous 

 matter, to wit, the remains of drift-wood, and perchance of sea-weed, 

 cast on shore by strong gales. All this is very easy to understand, 

 especially to those who pay regular visits to the coast, and note the 

 ever-active agencies at work there, building up in one place, and 

 throwing down in another ; heaping together pebbles and sea-drift 

 upon the beach, and deeply-mining, with the battering stroke of 

 great waves, the rocky faces of the cliff. 



But these modern inland evidences of a former coast-line, though 

 useful as teachers, are very great hindrances in our attempts to make 

 out the real constructive features of the district, for they cover up 

 all the older beds, all the rocks whose decomposed and disintegrated 

 layers give us the deep rich soils of our wheat-lands and gardens — 

 rocks older in time than themselves — mineralized beds of w^ater- 

 sediment containing shells and fishes and corals, treasures laid up of 

 old to bear testimony to us ; so that we who v.^ould learn of them 

 have thanks to give to railway-work for ha^ang in many places cut 

 through this coverlid of gravel and sand dovm to these older rocks, 

 and introduced to us local differences in their natures, which other- 

 wise we should have been ignorant of. And in every place where 

 this is the case, both along the line of railway and elsewhere, we see 

 one notable difference between the gravel-beds and the underlpng 

 old rock ; the gravel is in flat, level measures, while the sand, or 

 lime-rock, uptilted by volcanic action, dips more or less from the 

 horizontal. Therefore if geology did not teach us by evidence else- 

 where that millions of years elapsed between the deposition of the 

 New Red Sandstone, as a sedimentary accumulation, and its conceal- 

 ment beneath the slowly-laid gravel and sand-drift of the Channel, 

 our senses would give us the notion of some great lapse of time, long- 

 enough to alter the whole physical condition of the district, and to 

 permit the slow elevatory movement to die away in a period of 

 quiescence and repose. 



The cuttings along this line of railway being one great lesson- 

 book, we must, in stud;)^ng it, begin mth the earliest pages — that is, 

 with the bed of hardened water-sediment (called rock by us in com- 

 mon parlance), laid the earliest in time ; and to see this, Bridgnorth 

 students of this marvellous science must betake themselves to Ben- 

 ihall. I envy them the shortest day's work in that wonderful 

 treasure-house ; for the proximity of the line to that great limestone- 

 cliif of Sikirian rock affords gTeat scope for study, and advantages 

 of collecting relics of primeval life almost beyond any other place. 

 Gam iho top of the " Edge" as soon as you can, and make your way 



