OF THE NORTH-WEST OF ENGLAND. 233 



This bed of lower new red sandstone resembles the con- 

 glomerate beds of Norbury and Cheetham Weir Hole rather 

 than the thick deposit at Collyhurst. The trias and permian 

 beds dip nearly due south, at an angle of about 6°. The first- 

 named bed soon crops out,* but the two latter extend some 

 distance, and the coal-measures come in to the north, and 

 form part of the Worsley coal-field. These last comprise 

 398 yards of the upper field, and dip to the south at an angle 

 of about 8°. They extend upwards from the Pendleton and 

 Worsley four-feet coal to some large nodules of red ferru- 

 gineous limestone, termed bullions, found just under the red 

 sandstone rock seen in the river Medlock, at Holt Town, 

 Manchester. 



AsTLEY Section. 



In the No. 28 of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological 

 Society, Mr. G. W. Ormerod gives an account of some 

 borings in the permian deposits, near Astley. In a distance 

 of about ten or twelve feet of permian marls, twenty-eight 

 distinct beds of limestone, parted with beds of red marl, were 

 met with. In this thickness only a portion of the permian 

 marls appears, and nothing whatever is said of the conglome- 

 rate and lower new red sandstone. 



• The upper new red sandstone in this neighbourhood, especially under Chat 

 Moss, contains a large amount of light carburetted hydrogen-gas. Near Mr. 

 Bell's farm house, on Barton Moss, this gas comes up in such quantity, that 

 be uses it as fuel to heat the boiler of a small steam-engine which he employs 

 for fanning purposes. Many years since, MeMrs. Lancaster, in boring for coal 

 on the Mo6s, had previously tapped this gas. 



2 G 



