| Feet. | |
| Symmond’s Rock | 540 |
| Buck Stone | 954 |
| Knockholt | 760 |
| Clearwell Meand | 727 |
| Ruerdean Hill | 991 |
| High Beech | 891 |
| Coleford Meand | 760 |
| Berry Hill | 750 |
| Lea Bailey Hill | 580 |
| Mitcheldean Meand | 870 |
| Edge Hill | 908 |
| Stapledge | 749 |
| Putten Edge | 664 |
| Blaize Bailey | 684 |
| Blackney Hill | 507 |
Nearly all these spots afford magnificent views of the surrounding country, reaching as far as the Coteswold, Sedgebarrow, Malvern, Herefordshire, Welsh, and Monmouthshire heights, relieved intermediately by the windings of the Severn, cultivated plains, and woodland. Several very striking ravines intersect this Forest range, particularly at Lydbrook, Blackpool Brook, and
Ruspedge, such as would afford the artist many beautiful and interesting subjects for delineation. One of the hills, viz. that on which Mr. Colchester’s house, called “the Wilderness,” is situated, affords a prospect rarely equalled. The present residence dates from the year 1824, but it occupies a site which was built upon as early as 1710, if not before, for the accommodation of sporting parties in the days of Sir Duncombe Colchester, when its fine sycamores and trees of “the Beech Walk” were most likely planted.
Descending from the side of the hilly range on which the reader has been supposed to stand towards the middle of the Forest, a plain is reached varying in width from half a mile to little more than 100 yards, and forming a band round the somewhat elevated centre of the district. This circular valley or plain marks the outcrop of the middle series of coal seams, not less than ten in number, the principal ones being the Smith Coal, Lowery or Park End High Delf, Starkey, Rocky, and Upper and Lower Churchway. The combined thickness of these beds may be said to average 20 feet, and they are more argillaceous in character than the lower beds, which in general are harder in their nature, and hence they afford the larger portion of the fossiliferous remains observed and tabulated by Mr. R. Gibbs, who has kindly furnished the writer with the following—
Plantæ.
Asterophyllites equisetiformis, et foliosus.
Bothrodendron punctatum.
Calamites approximatus, nodosus.
Caulopteris primæva.
Lepidodendron dichotomum, et elegans, et Serlii, et Sternbergii, et majus.