DIRECfORY.) Sl,AFFORDSHIRE .. 19

(1.) UP'F'" Llandovery 8andstone.-The lowest Silurian workings have since been discontinue]. There is a small beds of the district are to be seen on the east of Hay Head inlier of Mountain Limestone at Mixon, and the same bed (m an old quarry south·east of Bhustoke Lodge), near Great is again brought to the surface just outside the county at Barr, where the Uppet• Llandovery Sandstone crops out; it .Astbury, where it is got for lime. - is here very fossiliferous, containing the trilobites Encrin­ The fossils of the Mountain Limestone include the brachi~ urus punctatus, Phacops caudatus, &c. ; with the brachiopod pod shells, Productus giganteus and Chonetes papilionacea / shells 8trophom,ena, Pentamerus, Rhynchonella, &c. This with corals such as Lithostrotion martini, besides crinoids, bed is known as the Llandovery Sandstone, because it is best &c. ; these prove the rock to have been formed at the seen near the little Welsh town of that name; it is of the bottom of a clear and deep sea. .As we do not anywhere ia same age as the May Hill Sandstone. this district see the base of the formation. we cannot state its thickness; but it cannot be much less than 3,000 feet. (2.) The Barr (or Hay Head) Limestone which succeeds A discovery made known in 1go6 proves that the carboni.. is the same bed of JimPstone as that at Woolhope, in Here­ ferous limestone extends further to the south in this county fordshire : it is a valuable band, about 40 feet in thickness, than had previously been suspected, for a limestone contain• yielding an excellent hydraulic cement ; and, from the small mg fossils which conclusively proved it to belong to the percentage of phosphorus which it contains is specially highest beds of the Carboniferous Limestone was struck in a adapted as a flux for ironstone. .At the outcrop it has been heading driven from one of the shafts of the Fair Oak Colliery, so long worked as to be exhausted, but there no about 2i miles north of . reason why it should not be largely got by underground workings ; it contains such fossils as the " Barr trilobite''­ UPPER CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION : (I.) The Pt:ndle• Illt~Jnus barriensis, with brachiopod shells and corals. side 8eries.-In the year 1836 the late Professor John This Barr limestone dips to the west at an angle of about Phillips gave the name of "Yoredale Series" to certain 10 degrees, in which direction it is overlaid by a mass of shales, thin limestones, &c., which in Yoredale (or Wensley•~ shales, perhaps 8oo feet thick, which occupy the SIH'face for dale), m Yorkshire, are to lie between the CarboniferoWJ._ a distance of two miles to the westward, and are known Limestone below and the Millstone Grit above ; it was but. geologically as : natural, therefore, that when somewhat similar shales, &c.,._ (3-) The Lower Wenlock .Shales. .At one or two locali­ were found in the same relative position in North ~ shire, Lancashire, &c., they were also d11bbed "Yoredal&­ ties, as the" Five Lanes," near Walsall, fossils are plentiful, Sbales." Of recent years, however, Dr. Wheelton Hind and chiefly trilobites, as Phacops caudatuiJ, and such brachio­ pod shells as Obolus and Strophomena. other workers have found that the North , Lancashire, &c., strata contain different fossils to those of (4.) The Dudley (or Wenlock) Limestone overlies the the Yorkshire " Y oredales." Taking Pendleside, in Lanca.· ~ Lower Wenlock shales just mentioned: it consists of two shire, as the place where these distinct rocks are best dis- ~ well-marked bands, separated by about So feet of shales. played, the name of the Pendleside Series has been given ' These Tun from Daw End, past Walsall, and then, dipping to them. under the coal-measures, they continue by Darlaston and The Pendleside beds of Staffordshire are found in the · Wednesbmy (where they are worked by shafts), in a south­ north of the county only. Extending westwards from westerly direction, till they are again brought up, forming the , they enter Staffordshire near Flash, Longnor dome-shaped masses known as Dudley Castle and the Wren's and Warslo-w, and can be traced by Thorny Leigh, Upper Nest, whilst still farther west they again rise to the surface Elkstone and to Leek, Cotton, Meerbrook, &c. at Burst Hill. The upper or thin Wenlock limestone bed is They form a long strip from Moor to Endon ;. mostly got for fluxing purposes, the lower thick band being and on the Cheshtre boundary hne the Pendleside strata are­ burnt for agricultural and building operations. Perhaps no well exposed just east of .Astbury Lime Works. other district has such a variety of fine Silurian fossils as the neighbourhood of Dudley ; shells, corals, encrinites and The characteristic Pendleside series fossils are such shells trilobites have been found here in such numbers and in a as Prolecanites compressus (a large goniatite), Posidonoaya state of perfection such as no other locality in Britain ex­ membranacea, Glyphioceras reticulatum" &c. The rocks in hibits. Oalymene Blumenbachii, the 11 Dudley Locust," as which these fossils occur are crowstones (very hard sand­ it is locally called, is the commonest trilobite ; but altogether stones or quartzites), and shales, with thin bands of black several hundred species of these early crustaceans have limestone, altogether only 250 feet thick, near Congleton Edge, but thickening to over 1,000 feet as they are followed been found, represented by thousands of specimens. to the north-east, towards . (5.) The Sedgley (or Aymestry) Limestone. This higher The Pendleside group may be considered as being really limestone is divided from the Dudley limestone by a great the base or lower part of the Millstone Grit, with which its thickness of shales, perhaps as much as I,ooo feet. The fossils show it to be closely connected. Sedgler limestone is a dark brown nodular band, some 25 feet thtck, which crops out at Sedgley Beacon, at Turner's (II.) The Millstone Grit.-The next member (the Hill near Lower Gornal, and at the Hayes, near Lye Waste, Millstone Grit) of the Upper Carboniferous series consists about two miles east of Stourbridge. [The last-named of an alternation of shales, with several massive, thick­ locality is in Worcestershire.] When burnt it produces a bedded sandstones, which form bold escarpments running dark-coloured lime, locally called the " Black Lime," and north and south. makes excellent mortar. Shells are frequent, a large -