Chap. V.] 
THE MALVEEN HILLS. 
93 
well described by Mr. Leonard Horner in the infancy of English geology. 
The prevailing rocks are varieties of syenite, consisting of quartz, felspar, 
and hornblende, and occasionally, where the last -mentioned mineral is 
absent, presenting the appearance of a true granite. Of the other mine- 
rals, epidote is most disseminated. Again, compact felspar-rock or felstone 
is abundant, and passages from it into syenite and greenstone are not 
unfrequent. These amorphous rocks have evidently intruded upon certain 
stratified deposits which, usually in a highly altered condition, occur in 
and along the syenitic chain. They consist of chloritic schist, quartzite, 
and highly twisted micaceous schist, passing into a sort of gneiss. 
I have already assigned (p. 14) my reasons for not accepting the inge- 
nious interpretation of Dr. Holl*, that these crystalline rocks are of Lau- 
rentian age, and have explained why I consider them to be a metamor- 
phosed mass of the lower portion of the Cambrian deposits, and therefore 
equivalents of the crystalline (metamorphic) Cambrian rocks of Anglesea 
and North Wales. In thus differing from Dr. Holl, I am bound to say 
that his memoir on the Malvern Hills is well worthy of being studied by 
geologists ; for, irrespective of the theory by which the crystalline rocks 
are referred to the Lauren tian age, all the subdivisions of the rocks com- 
posing these hills are most instructively indicated, — the mineral characters 
of the crystalline rocks, as determined by the Rev. J. H. Timins, being 
described with great skill, some corrections being made in the mapping 
of faults and strata, and much interesting information brought to bear on 
the history of the formations and their changes. 
It not being within the scope of this volume to describe in detail the 
former effects of eruptive molten matter in transmuting the character and 
condition of the sediments through which it bursts forth, I would beg 
geological students to examine the natural section (p. 95), with the detailed 
works of Phillips, Symonds, and Holl in hand. According to my view, he 
will see that, as the strata flanking the ridge on either side approach to 
its central part, or axis of igneous rocks, they gradually become more hard 
and brittle, and that, their schistose character gradually ceasing, the beds 
pass into thick amorphous masses, in which the lines of bedding are lost, 
and the substance is much altered and fissured by many devious joints with 
serpentinous coatings. The nucleus or eruptive mass, exposed in extensive I 
quarries in Ragged-stone Hill, near the White-leaved Oak, is compact fel- 
spar, passing into syenite : but the northern extensions of this same erup- 
tive ridge, particularly as displayed in the Worcestershire Beacon and North 
Hill, contain other varieties of the igneous rocks already spoken off. 
It would appear from the close examination made by the Eev. W. S. 
Symonds and Mr. Allan Lambert, during the making of the tunnel at 
* See his memoir, Quart. Journ. G-eol. Soc. vol. in 1852, was still visible in 1858 in the bottom of 
xxi. p. 72 &c. the quarries; for doubtless it may now be hidden 
t It was gratifying to me, in a visit with by debris, and subsequent observers might be 
Professor Eamsay, to observe that this minute sceptical, 
point of the syenitic axis, which I first observed 
