527 
Quartz Rock of the Lickey Hill , Sic. 
as imbedded in the pebble strata of the new red sandstone formation 
in the plains of the Midland counties. 
Having endeavoured to establish an identity in point of substance 
between the quartzose pebbles of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire 
and the rock of the Lower Lickey, it only remains to mark one 
circumstance in the character of the latter rock which shews it to 
be particularly calculated to afford such pebbles as we have been 
attempting to trace up to it. This consists in the shattered con- 
dition in which the quartz occurs in its native bed; being a state 
calculated to afford the greatest possible quantity of pebbles at the 
least expense of time and friction, from the smallest bulk of rock 
destroyed : Whereas many rocks when broken fall into large solid 
blocks or tabular masses, the strata of the Lickey quartz rock 
are naturally cracked throughout into millions of small angular 
fragments of intense hardness, which barely adhere to each other, 
as they lie in their native beds, and fall to pieces on application of 
the smallest violence. A rock composed of materials so loosely set 
together, would be of all others the most liable to destruction by the 
action of currents that may at any time have been directed against 
it; and this circumstance may assist to explain the reason why so 
few portions now remain of a formation which the abundance of 
pebbles that have been derived from it, shews to have possessed at 
one time an extent by no means inconsiderable. It is almost 
impossible to conceive that the millions of pebbles which compose 
this gravel should have been derived from large blocks ground down 
to their present average size of a pullet’s egg ; and the presence of a 
rock in this neighbourhood which splits spontaneously into such 
minute fragments as have been described, supersedes the necessity 
of any such hypothesis. Thus we find in the Lower Lickey ridge 
and chain of Caer Caradoc, all the elements necessary for the 
Vol. V. 3 x 
