Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/226

208 suddenly crops into this loose sand at a depth of 90 feet below the surface of the ground.

This loose red sand seems to be the washing of the adjacent New red sandstone, and when it is a little consolidated, which it sometimes is, and only a small section of it is exposed, it is extremely difficult to distinguish it from undisturbed New red. This is especially the case about Pelsall and Pelsall Heath. I should class with this drift, in time and manner of accummulation, those quartzose gravel beds which do not belong to the New red sandstone, but which are derived from the washing of its 'pebble beds" or conglomerates. These occur very abundantly in some places; they were well shown formerly in the deep cutting of the canal at Smethwick. They spread over all the southern part of Cannock Chase, resting on the Coal-measures there, having been brought probably from the undisturbed pebble beds or conglomerates of the New red, which form the northern portion of the Chase.

Whether these three sorts of drift all belong to one and the same period, that commonly known by the name of the glacial period, is a problem yet to be solved. I may be pardoned, perhaps, for saying that I think many geologists are too hasty in speaking of all superficial drifted materials as "the drift," as if there could only be one drift. We have already seen that there was both a Permian and a New red sandstone drift, portions of which, when they appear isolated at the surface, would be taken by any one for parts of the " glacial drift," at first sight.

I know of no reason, for instance, why the drift clay, and sand and gravel containing Chalk flints and Lias fossils, might not be of the age of the gravels of the Plastic clay, though I am not at all disposed to assert that they are so, because, as I know of no evidence against such supposition, neither do I know of any reason for it.

If it be true that stags' antlers were found under the red sand at Moxley, it would, of course, be a proof of its comparatively recent origin; but in the absence of that or some such proof. I should hold myself prepared to find that these sand and gravel washings of the New red sandstone were of any age from that of the Oolites down to the Pleistocene.

 

No one can be more sensible than myself of the deficiencies of the preceding pages. The work was executed on the Ordnance map of the scale of one inch to the mile, there being no other of similar accuracy on a larger scale. A more detailed survey might have been made had there been a map on the scale of six inches to the mile, such as that of the Townland Survey of Ireland (by the 