NATURAL HISTORY. 
107 
is remarkable as containing more alumina than any- 
other yet discovered, which accounts for its plastic 
superiority. It is employed in the manufacture 
of crucibles, and vessels for the conversion of iron 
into steel, and in the baking of porcelain. The 
inferior qualities are formed into fire bricks. 
Intervening between the Clent Hills and Broms- 
grove Lickey, are the eminences of Romsley and 
Waysley, abounding with rolled pebbles analogous to 
those of the Upper Lickey. To the east of these 
heights stretches the primitive line of the Lower 
Lickey, composed of granular quartz, extending 
rather more than two miles from north to south, and 
intersected by four transverse vallies, through the 
winding defile of the most easterly of which, is the 
high road from Worcester to Birmingham.^ Ruebury 
Hill, on the north, is a round eminence detached 
from the rest, the summit of which is crowned with 
an encampment. The quartz in this range is strati- 
fied in beds varying from an inch to many feet in 
thickness, separated by thin laminse of soft argilla- 
ceous slate, which is highly micaceous, and of a yellow 
colour. Through the quartz itself small crystals of red 
and yellowish felspar are disseminated, usually in a 
state of decomposition. Similar felspar is found in 
most of the larger interstices ; and occasionally also 
in minute fissures that divide the quartzoze strata in 
lines parallel with their planes. The strata are split 
^ The road has been recently altered, and is now conducted along the western 
side of the Upper Lickey, and penetrates the Lower Lickey line by the valley 
between Rednall and Ruebury hills. 
