434 
TJIE GEOLOGIST, 
the bye, tlian gTavel, and at Upper Ai'ley, where there is a grand 
cutting throngh thiity I'eet of those gravel and sand deposits, on the 
I'ailway, woi'th going miles to see, even if the collectoi- of ancient 
life-remains unsuccessfully searches for the common whelk [Bucclnum 
iindahm), which lias been found with fragmenis of other sea-shells 
among the smaller pebbles, just as they were left by a retiring wave. 
And here, too, in lines of shoal-sand, exposed in the face of the cut- 
ting, may be seen black " pockets," pai'tly filled with carbonaceous 
matter, to wit, the remains of drift-wood, and perchance of sea-weed, 
cast on shore by strong gales. All this is very easy to understand, 
especially to those who pay regular visits to the coast, and note the 
ever-active agencies at work there, building up in one place, and 
throwing down in another ; heaping together pebbles and sea-drift 
upon the beach, and deeply-mining, with the battering stroke of 
great waves, the rocky faces of the cliff. 
But these modern inland evidences of a former coast-line, though 
useful as teachers, are very great hindrances in our attempts to make 
out the real constructive features of the district, for they cover up 
all the older beds, all the rocks whose decomposed and disintegrated 
layers give us the deep rich soils of our wheat-lands and gardens — 
rocks older in time than themselves — mineralized beds of water- 
sediment containing shells and fishes and corals, treasures laid up of 
old to bear testimony to us ; so that we who would learn of them 
have thanks to give to railway-work for having in many places cut 
through this coverlid of gravel and sand down to ihcse older rocks, 
and introduced to us local diflTcrences in their natures, which other- 
wise we should have been ignorant of. And in every place where 
this is the case, both along the line of railway and elsewhere, we see 
one notable difference between the gi'avel-beds and the underlying 
old rock ; the gravel is in flat, level measures, while the sand, or 
lime-rock, uptilted by volcanic action, dips more or less from the 
horizontal. Therefore if geology did not teach us by evidence else- 
where that millions of years elapsed between the deposition of the 
New Red Sandstone, as a sedimentary accumulation, and its conceal- 
ment beneath the slowly-laid gravel and sand-drift of the Channel, 
our senses would give us the notion of some great lapse of time, long 
enough to alter the whole jihysical condition of ihe district, and \o 
permit the slow elcvatory movement to die away in a period of 
quiescence and repose. 
The cuttings along this line of railway being one great lesson- 
book, we must, in strxdying it, begin with the earliest pages— that is, 
with the bed of hardened water-sediment (called rock by us in com- 
mon parlance), laid the earliest in time ; and to see this, Bridgnorth 
students of this marvellous science must betake themselves to Ben- 
thall. I envy them the shortest day's work in that wonderful 
treasure-house ; for the proximity of the line to that great limestone- 
cliff of Silurian rock affords great scope for study, and advantages 
of collecting relics of primeval life almost beyond any other place. 
Gain the top of the " Edge" as soon as you can, and make your way 
