695 
also become a bard crystalline basalt. It rests upon a coal 
shale, very near the bottom of the carboniferous series in 
this part of the country. It was formerly thirty or forty 
feet higher. The top has been removed for mending ; and 
the present interesting section will soon follow in the same 
direction. 
The peculiarity of this quarry consists in the extreme 
divergence of the columns from each other, some being 
straight and vertical, whilst others are curved, and lie in a 
horizontal direction, and radiating from the tops of the 
vertical ones which are in the centre of the quarry ; thus 
proving that the direction of such columns is not always 
perpendicular to the plane of cooling, as has been asserted 
to be the case. 
I will only add that I believe the bed of felspathic trap, 
of which Powk Hill is the termination, is quite distinct from 
the Basaltic Hills of Rowley. The former bed, as pre- 
viously stated, being embedded in the lowest members of 
the coal series in this district, whilst the Rowley Range 
lies above the thick or ten vard coal, which is among 
the highest. 
Powk Hill was first mentioned, I believe, in Messrs. 
Coneybeare and Phillips's Geology of England and Wales, 
published in 182*2, p. 459. It was afterwards more fully, 
but rather inaccurately, described by Mr. William Hawkes 
Smith, in an account of Birmingham and its vicinity, and it 
is mentioned in the memoir of the Geological Survey of J. 
Beete Jukes, Esq., published in 1853 ; but it is only recently 
that the beautiful and interesting section has been made which 
is represented in Photographs, (a series of which has been 
presented to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society), 
which my friend Mr. William Hawkes, of Birmingham, has 
been chiefly instrumental in procuring, and to whom I beg to 
give my thanks for his zeal and kindness in obtaining them. 
