112 MR. E. W. BINNEY ON THE PERMIAN BEDS 



mixed together — I could not undertake to speak with cer- 

 tainty. If, however, they belonged to the last-named strata, 

 they were the only specimens of fossil plants that had 

 then to my knowledge been met with in the permian beds 

 of the north-west of England. Now, in sinking the shaft 

 at Bedford Lodge, of the strata in which I have given full 

 particulars above, I collected undoubted specimens of 

 Sigillaria, Lepidodendron, and Sternbergia, the specific 

 characters of which could not be distinctly recognised, Cata- 

 mites cannceformis and C. approximates, and fossil wood, 

 both in the fine-grained sandstones and coarse conglomerates 

 containing rounded and partly rounded pebbles of white 

 quartz, of the size of a common marble. The fossils occurred 

 in all the arenaceous rocks found under the red marls and 

 limestones, and lying above the carboniferous strata. All the 

 'beds were full of nodules and patches of a soft liver-coloured 

 clay containing iron, and most of the fossil wood was con- 

 verted into that substance. The strata which contained the 

 fossil plants I take to be permian from their geological 

 position, as well as from the pebbly character of the beds ; 

 for, although many of the red sandstones of the upper coal- 

 field of Lancashire doubtless contain much red oxide of iron, 

 and red and liver-coloured nodules of clay, I never yet found 

 a coal measure sandstone, except in the lower field, containing 

 large quartz pebbles ; — in fact, some of these beds are quite 

 as much conglomerates as the millstone grits are, and can 

 scarcely be distinguished from those rocks, except that they 

 are rather more pulverulent. The men engaged in sinking 

 did not know where the permian strata ceased and the coal 

 measures commenced, for both strata dipped in the same 

 direction, and nearly at the same angle. 



The coal measures to a stranger would appear to pass into 

 the overlying permian strata, but the Worsley and Astley 

 Four Feet seam lying under unquestionably proves that the 

 former beds, at their point of contact with the permian strata, 



