OF THE NORTH-WEST OF ENGLAND. 267 



The soft re/1 sandstone of Heaton Mersey, Beet Bank 

 Bridge, Collyhurst, Sutton, Rougham Point, Belah, and 

 West House, differs so much in its physical characters from 

 the purple-coloured gritstones of Whitehaven lying under the 

 conglomerate of Barrow Mouth, and is so generally absent 

 from the permian beds, that they may be considered as dis- 

 tinct rocks ; and hence I am inclined to class the Whitehaven 

 rocks with the purple -coloured carboniferous sandstone of 

 Collyhurst rather than the soft red permian sandstone found 

 at the last named place. 



The soft red sandstone and its overlying bed of con- 

 glomerate are deposits of far greater extent and importance 

 than they were hitherto supposed to be, and I am convinced 

 that they will prove to be of the same geological age as the 

 red sandstone and conglomerate seen at the Craigs and in the 

 Cleuden near Dumfries. When I first saw the conglomerate 

 bed at the latter places some years since in company with 

 my friend Professor Harkness, it puzzled me much, as being 

 like no trias deposit with which I was acquainted in the 

 north-west of England, and so much resembling some of the 

 permian beds. Professor Harkness has since written on 

 this district.* Sir R. I. Murchison, I believe, was the first 



• On the New Red Sandstone of the Southern portion of the Vale of the 

 Nith, by Robert Harkness, Esq. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 

 vol. VI., p. 389, et seq. In this article Mr. Harkness describes the Dumfries 

 sandstones as triassic, and at p. 397 of his interesting memoir, admits that the 

 whole of the Dumfries beds are inferior to the sandstone of Annan, containing 

 tracks of the Labyrinthodon, like those of the Cheshire trias. He divides the 

 Dumfries beds into three deposits, viz. : — 



Ft. 

 " 1. Thick bedded sandstones with their overlying fla§^ strata. . 390 



" 2. Conglomerate 300 



" 3. Fine grained sandstone covering the conglomerate 300 



The tracks of animals found in the first sand&tone are quite different from those 

 found in the trias. When I first saw the conglomerate above the red sandstone 

 att the Craigs quarry, near Dumfries, I was not so well acquainted with the 



