HOBEETS— GEOLOGY OF THE SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY. 437 



Tliis brown fern- coal should be carefully examined, for any thin films, 

 natural shavings of the bark, which will show the cells, or vessels, or 

 tissues of these ancient plants. A similar bed, belonging to the lower 

 coal-measures of Nova- Scotia, has yielded many instructive fragments 

 of this kind;* and we are indebted to the coal-measures of Moscow 

 for others. t Let us search for them nearer home. 



A great deal of rock has yet to be removed at this place, so that 

 many rare and beautiful plants will be brought to light, and, let me 

 hope, rescued by geological students, induced by this sketch of its 

 fossil wealth to pay the bed a visit, before the treasures are carted 

 away to other parts of the line. Mr. Edward Baugh, of Bewdley, 

 has a noble collection of these fossils, obtained from this and near- 

 lying places. 



Above the coal-measures are other red rocks, called Permian. 

 These are of special interest to the geological observer, because they 

 evidence, by their mineral constituents and fossil remains, the appear- 

 ance and productions of the surface at the close of the first great 

 division of ancient time, the Palaeozoic epoch. 



Astley- Abbots is on these sandstones, which there lie against the 

 hilly coal-measure ground of Tasley, a line continued due south to 

 Oldbury and Chelmarch, with the same relations of natural position 

 to the westward band of coal-rock. Plants, allied to palms of the 

 tropical zone are the clearest indication preserved to us of the flora of 

 this age ; but I do not think any have been found in railway- cuttings 

 through the Chelmarch country. However, when the line is opened, 

 I hope Alveley will be reached by the " Bridgnorth Naturalists' Pield 

 Club," and the quarries near the village, and at Shropshire farm 

 examined and studied, both for the character of the rock, and the 

 fragments of fossilized palm-stems that occur in it. 



To learn the next page in our rock- volume, we need not stray far 

 from Bridgnorth. Unfruitful of fossils, and unstable in quality as the 

 New Red Sandstone is, it has so much to charm us in its picturesque 

 water- worn rocks as exampled at Quatford and Stanley, and in the 

 deep dells and valleys about Apley and Badger, that I question 

 whether other systems, though richer in relics of ancient fauna and 

 flora, have an equal place in our regard. No doubt the question will 

 be asked by many enquiring minds- — looking up at the deep cutting 

 into New E-ed Rock at the Knoll, or at the still greater thickness of the 

 same measures Cthe Lower Soft Sandstone), upon which the castle 

 stands, and through which the tunnel takes a cu'cuitous and utterly 

 incomprehensible way — why is it that no life-remains are found in, 

 these rocks ? Sediment of a former sea they undoubtedly are ; could 

 that water have been a lifeless barren element ? And to these natural 

 enquiries we can return no certain answer ; though the presence of 

 oxides in the old water to an extent sufficient to colour the whole of 

 its depositions a ferruginous red, seems enough of itself to explain 



* Dawson's Sup, Acadian Geology, p. 25, and Geol Soc. Journ., vol. xv., p. 626. 

 t Memoires de la Soc. Imp. des Nat. de Moscou, torn, xiii., p. 39. 



