THE QUARRY 169 
only occasionally from that part which shows 
evidence of recent working. Indeed, I am told 
that the good stone is nearly worked out, and it 
will not be long before the place is deserted entirely 
by the quarrymen. The sandstone, of Carboniferous 
age, is an ‘“‘outcrop” (see p. 36); it forms the 
ridge which can be followed right across the meadow. 
It dips at an angle of about 30 degrees. In going 
across the ridge, you walk over the upturned 
edge of the bed, and by measuring the distance 
across the ridge, you can roughly calculate the 
thickness of the bed, of which the ridge is an 
outcrop. I make the distance to be upwards of 
150 feet, so the bed will be about that thickness. 
The hill, which begins to rise steeply about 
fifty yards away, is of volcanic origin. It is com- 
posed of lavas which flowed from a volcano that 
was active in the earliest Carboniferous times. If 
everything were now as it was when the sand 
forming this sandstone was deposited, the ground 
on which we are standing would be higher than 
the hill yonder. But this ground has sunk, and 
in sinking, the edge of the sandstone has turned 
up against the lavas: hence the outcrop. It is 
like the upturned edge of the paste in a pie-dish. 
The bulk of the sandstone bed is away down below 
the surface. It is only the edge we see. And as 
the paste in the bed of the pie-dish is covered with 
fruit, so is the sandstone covered with other material, 
except just at its upturned edge. There is a line 
of “‘ fault’? between the lavas and the sandstone. 
The latter has been faulted down very gradually, 
slowly but surely. I can show you a place on the 
22 
