EOBEETS — GEOLOGY OF THE SEVEEN VALLEY EAILWAY. 



435 



along tTie line of old qnarries tliat rnns parallel with the flow of the 

 river beneath. Everyvi^here through these quarries lie spoil-hanks 

 of debris and fragmentalia, heaps of rubbish to practical eyes, but 

 treasure-houses of much value to geological ones, for I have but to 

 stoop over them — putting on my best eyes for the work — and I can 

 pick up shells, and corals, and zoophytes, aye, and shelled insects 

 too, (Trilobites) sea-woodlice, whose hard enduring shields, protect- 

 ing them in life, have been mineralized into panoply of stone, that 

 shall tell me a certain and reliable story of their habits and position, 

 when each was tenanted by a living, moving, feeding creature. Let 

 those of your party who choose look after the thousand and one de- 

 tached fossils which are strewn over the ground ; but the lover of 

 antiquities shall come with me, and study a slab whose surface shall 

 be al relievo with life-remains : in truth, a very old page of earthly 

 history, writ in strange, uncouth, almost undecypherable characters. 

 To this a Persepolitan cylinder, graven with arrow-headed glyphs, is 

 a record of yesterday ; to this the tablets of Seth, on which were 

 written the wisdom of the pre-delugian age, are of modern date. No 

 " Open Sesame !" of Professor Fehretmout or Dr. Dryasdust will open 

 to the day and reveal the secrets of these times, for here is a chron- 

 icle of Nature, writ so long ago that 



Mountains Lave arisen since, 

 With cities on their fianks," 



No mere poetical saying, but a sober scientific fact. 



The great outcrop of these Silurian beds at Benthall is continued 

 westward to Wenlock, and there, in the "Edge," developed to an ex- 

 tent which has caused this di^dsion of Silurian strata to be known 

 everywhere as the Wenlock series. Some of its layers are little else 

 than a mass of life-remains, corals especially, of which about forty 

 species may be found with very little search. There is no other ex- 

 posure of this old rock elsewhere along the course of the line : more 

 modern deposits everywhere cover it up. 



Next above the sediment of the Silurian ocean lie the sandy and 

 brasby beds of the Old Red Sandstone lagoons ; dark-red rocks, 

 with loands of compacted fragmentalia, locally known as cornstones. 

 There is an open cutting through a dome- shaped protrusion of these, 

 a mile south of the Victoria-bridge, but the line hugs the Severn too 

 closely to permit a further acquaintance with this, the typical rock 

 of Herefordshire. The Old Red, however, approaches Bridgnorth as 

 nearly on the west as the Leasowes, Old Hay, and Harpswood, from 

 v\4iich places it has the surface all to itself westward through Corve 

 Dale to Wenlock Edge. And a very fertile land that surface is, for 

 the cornstone makes notably good wheat-land. In our local deve- 

 lopment of this red rock, so distinct in appearance from the blue 

 limestone, there are no traces of shells or coral, though doubtless both 

 were abundant in the seas of the age. We prove, however, the ex- 

 istence of fish in that water, for both in cornstone and sandstone we 



