ROniCBTS — GKOLOGV OF TIIR SEVERN VAM-HV RAIIiWAY. 
437 
This brown fern-coal should be carefully cxaniincd,for any thin filma, 
natural shavings of the bark, wliich 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 otliers.t Let us search for them nearer home. 
A great deal of rock has yet to be I'enioved 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 pai-ts 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-measiu'es 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, wbich there lie against the 
hilly coal-measure ground of Tasley, a line continued due south to 
Oldbmy 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 a;ge ; but I do not think any have been found in railway- cuttings 
through the Chelmarch countrj^. However, when the line is opened, 
I hope Alveley will be reached by the " Bridg-north Naturalists' Field 
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 jsage in our rock-volume, we need not stray far 
from Bridgnorth. Unfraitful 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 Red Rock at the Knoll, or at the still greater thickness of the 
same measures (the Lower Soft Sandstone), upon which the castle 
stands, and throtigh which the tunnel takes a circuitous 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 bai'ren element ? And to these natural 
enquiries we can return no certain answer ; though the presence of 
oxides in the old water to an extent sufilcient to colour the whole of 
its depositions a ferruginous red, seems enough of itself to explain 
* Dawson's >Sup. Acadian Geology, p. 2.5, and Geol Soc. Journ., vol. xv., p. 626. 
t Memoires de la Soc. Imp. des Nat. de Moscou, torn, xiii., p. 30. 
