nothing is seen till we come to the "red rock;" but as near Hay Head there is a space of one third of a mile between the two, we ought, if this Barr limestone be truly the representative of the Woolhope limestone, to get the upper part of the Caradoc sandstone series in the intermediate space. The ground is absolutely flat, and rather wet and marshy, and apparently covered by drift clay, so that in the absence of deep excavations this point cannot be settled.
The above passage is left as it stood in the first edition, and it has been already pointed out, p. 109, that subsequent research proved the existence of this sandstone where it was thus anticipated, and showed that it was concealed not only by Drift clay, but by a thin covering of Coal-measures, except in one little ditch or gully at the back of the house called Daffodilly and in a small quarry near Shustoke Lodge. The sandstone, now called Llandovery, rises gently out from under the Wenlock shale, the relations of the beds being precisely the same as at the Colmers and the Long Wood near the north end of the Lower Lickey.
It is possible that the fault before mentioned, which strikes east and west from the Moat, and is supposed to cut off the limestones south of Walsall, is continued to the east, and likewise cuts off the south end of the Barr limestone.
No limestone is known, either by natural outcrop or by sinkings, south of this line. 'The Silurian shale, however, is seen at intervals, not only in the canal before mentioned but at other points, and was formerly exposed in the cutting of the London and North-western Railway south of Tame bridge. In a horsepond at the Goodwin farmhouse considerable nodules of limestone were got out in the year 1849, rendering probable the near neighbourhood of one of the bands of limestone to this spot. On Delves Green are many old pits in the lower Coal-measures, from which the Blue-flats ironstone had formerly been got, and one of these had been sunk as a trial pit to the depth of 50 yards, chiefly, as appeared from the "spoil" on the pit bank, in Silurian shale. Near the seventh milestone on the Walsall and Birmingham road an outlier of Coal-measures, with sandstone and ironstone, was cut through on the top of the high ground there, making it probable that the whole of this piece of Silurian shale south of the outcrop of the limestones would have been covered by a mask of Coal-measures, had the ground been a little higher and the rocks not worn down by denudation to their present level.
That the Silurian shale continues under the coal-field to the westward of the district now described, dipping gently and equably towards the west, is shown by the following facts:—
On the west side of Friar Park wood a shaft was sunk in 1849, in the first 60 feet of which one or two small coals were found, under which were some ironstones, and below them Silurian shale, in which the sinking was continued to a depth of 150 feet from the surface.[1]
At Hobbs Hole, a little cast of Darlaston, according to the section given at p. 108, from Mr. Smallman's information, there are 292 ft. 6 in, of Coal-measures beneath the Heathen coal, then 60 feet of Limestone shale, followed by the Thin limestone of Walsall, which is there 16½ feet
- ↑ This was being done for Lord Dartmouth. I did not see the person who advised the sinking, but the man in charge on the bank was not aware that it was the "limestone shale" or "bavin" they were bringing up, although it was crowded with fossils, and bad even nodules of limestone in it; and he told me they were trying then for coal underneath it.
