176 
PETROLOGY OE LOCAL PEBBLES. 
Aug., 1889. 
He points out that the lines of false bedding of the Bunter 
beds indicate almost invariably currents sweeping from the 
west or north-west, and quotes Mr. Sorby’s observation that, 
in examining a large number of specimens of New Red Sand¬ 
stone from various localities lying in a north and south line 
from Scotland to Devonshire, “what struck me most was the 
comparatively uniform extent of the wearing,” inferring that 
“ we cross the line of drifting transversely from north to 
south.” The fossiliferous pebbles do not seem at present to 
throw much light on the situation of the parent rock. 
The celebrated pebble bed of Budleigh Salterton, of Lower 
Keuper age, has been very carefully examined for some years, 
and the fossils found in the quartzites there are such as are 
contained in no British rock; while across the Channel, in 
Normandy and Brittany, Silurian and Devonian quartzites with 
similar fossils do occur. The Devonshire geologists have, says 
Mr. Harrison, located the home of their travelled quartzites 
under the water of the English Channel, and it is probable that 
most of the rocks which furnished the Midland pebbles now 
lie beneath a mass of newer strata by which they are covered 
over and concealed. 
Into the question of the fossil contents of the stones I am 
quite unable to enter; but 1 owe many specimens to the 
kindness of Mr. A. T. Evans, who, while engaged in what must 
be the wearying search for organic remains, has collected 
examples of other rocks, which I have thus been able to 
examine. These are mostly from the King’s Heath pit and 
from Sutton Coldfield. I have collected a considerable 
number of specimens from Sutton and from the Alvechurch 
district, although I should be inclined, for reasons to be stated 
later, to consider most of these as forming the glacial rewasli 
of the Bunter beds with some admixture of rocks of which the 
place of origin is much less obscure. 
As such a large majority of the pebbles are quartzite, it 
will, perhaps, be best to consider these first in somewhat of 
detail. These I have studied principally from Sutton speci¬ 
mens, particularly from the pit by Blackroot Pool. At 
this pit the pebbles are often cracked in a very peculiar 
manner ; all the planes of fracture lie vertically, or nearly 
so, in the natural face of the digging, and occasionally they 
are seen to originate in two pebbles at the points at which 
the two are in contact. When this is the case, it is not the 
side contacts, but the vertical ones, from which the cracks 
start. I hence conclude that the pressure which has cracked 
the pebbles was exerted in a vertical direction, driving them 
against each other. 
