NATURAL HISTORY. 
91 
unusual elevation/ large pebbles of breccia, boulders 
of chert, with casts of entrochi, and large blocks of por- 
phyry are abundantly distributed. All these pebbles 
appear evidently to have been subjected to the action 
of water, which must have rolled them from a consi- 
derable distance, as we in vain seek for any vestiges 
of similar rocks in situ. But in the neighbourhood 
of Kidderminster and Bewdley regular beds of round- 
ed pebbles of granular quartz rock occur in the 
sandstone, exactly similar in substance to the quartz 
rock of the Lower Lickey ; from which Dr. Buck- 
land^ infers that there has been an extensive destruc- 
tion of the sources from whence these pebbles have 
been supplied, as they often contribute no inconsider- 
able proportion to the entire bulk of the strata where 
they are found. The last diluvial waters have in 
many places torn up these pebbles from their lodge- 
ment in the new red sandstone, and they are thus 
mixed up with the later superficial gravel and spread 
over the surface of the plains of the midland counties 
* The upper or "Bromsgrove Lickey" which overhangs the camel-backed 
subordinate range of the Lower Lickey, and attains an elevation of upwards of 1000 
feet, stretches from north-west to south-east, at the distance of nearly ten miles from 
the bed of the Severn, and divides the upper part of the vale of Worcester from the 
more elevated plains of Birmingham, which in point of climate are a fortnight later 
in the ripening of their productions than those of the vale of Worcester. This pro- 
tuberance of the new red sandstone formation has its north-west termination in the 
Clent and Hagley Hills near Stourbridge, where strata belonging to the old red 
sandstone occur, alfording the calcareous breccia called cornstone. It is continuous 
south-eastward to Tardebigg, on the east of Bromsgrove, whence it stretches by 
Feckenham forest to the Ridgway on the west of Alcester, and there slopes off into 
the vale of Avon above Evesham. 
* Dr. Buckland on the quartz rock of the Lickey Hill, Worcestershire, in 
Trans, of the Geological Society of London, 4.to. vol. ii. p. 516. 
