On the Carboniferous Limestone of Oreton and Farlow, Clee Hills, Shropshire

Abstract

§ 1. The general physical and palseontological features of the small district referred to in these notes having been carefully and clearly described by Sir Roderick Murchison in his classic work ‘The Silurian System,’ the additional facts which a visit paid to it during the past autumn enables us to record may be considered simply as a continuation of those previously observed. The thin beds of limestone which form the basement of the Titterstone Clee Coal-field are well exposed in a marginal flexure of the strata north-eastward of the hill, at Oreton and Farlow, and also, at a somewhat higher level, around its southern abutments. Our observations upon the character of the beds and their fossil contents have bcen confined to the exposures in the first-named localities. The geographical relations of this limestone ridge with the nearlying millstone-grit and coal-measurcs, in their turn covered up by the sheets of erupted basalt which form the high summits of the Clee, are well scen from the igneous knoll of Kinlet, three miles to the emstward. § 2. Immediately below the summit of the ridge at Farlow, and on the northern side, is a quarry of yellow sandstone, from which recently a large quantity of stone has been obtained for the rebuilding of the church. It is a thick-bedded, fine-grained sandstone, having ripple-marked surfaces, and occasionally containing disseminated pebbles of quartz. The colour of the stone is a pale yellow, in places slightly stained by ferruginous oxidation. Remains of fossil Fishes were first