LOCAL OCCURRENCES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 
63 
breasting the Red-Sandstone, points out the course of the Lias to the termination 
of its invading promontory. In the north-east the swell of the Upper Lickey 
hides the adjacent singular Camel-backed Quartz hills and transverse vallies of 
the Lower Lickey, with their broken Limestones and Coal,* all black and dreary 
with a dense over-growth of Heaths. Still farther north the rounded Trappoid 
summits of the Clent hills appear, and at their termination a volcanic cloud 
conceals by day and points out by its portentous flash at night the position of 
Dudley Castle on its Limestone crag, a fit residence for some iron chieftain 
shrouded amidst steam and smoke, the clang of the modern Cyclops, and within 
view of the black Basaltic creations of the ancient.-j- Turning for relief to the 
glorious aspect of the south-west, the Malvern chain is there seen raising its stair¬ 
like summit in bold and magical perspective far along the horizon, the Syenitic 
rocks of its transverse vallies courting the last beams of the descending sun, and 
offering new and varying features to the eye, as its level rays are intercepted or 
not by the purple clouds preparing to descend upon the vacated track of the 
retiring sun. 
In commenting upon the Geology of this district, I prefer, by first considering 
existing actions, to move back upon the past, thus proceeding from the known to 
the unknown, rather than by empirically seizing upon a position among the 
fragments of the past, attempt to carve out a vista to the future, and thus attempt 
to account for existing appearances. 
Without presuming to concoct any startling hypotheses, I think there can be 
no objection to considering the tract of country I have marked out under at least 
three distinct aspects. 
i. Its present physical appearance and governing energies. 
ii. The state of it when former causes, now slumbering or extinct, exerted 
their domination. 
iii. The antecedent period. 
It is evident that there must have been a commencement to the exercise o 
those forces whose action has determined the present physical features of the 
country. There must have been a period when the Severn, now the great artery 
and irrigator of the vale, had not commenced its flow from the Cambrian moun¬ 
tains. There must, among the hoary records of time, exist some memento of that 
past action which has scattered over the surface of the Red Marl such immense 
deposits of what is generally denominated “ Diluvial Graveland not only so, 
but has mixed up in the indurated Sandstone itself beds of rounded pebbles that 
* See Di-.Buckland’s excellent description of the Lower Lickey in the Geological Transactions, 
Vol I. 
f The Rowley-Regis hills adjoining, some of which are columnar. 
