352 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Oct. 



the slaty rocks of Westmoreland, which separate the Carboniferous 

 limestone from the Permian of the Yale of the Eden, contain 

 Lower Silurian fossils similar to those of Cumberland. I hope 

 also to learn from him at this meeting what has been the effect of 

 certain great faults ranging from north to south, which have im- 

 pressed a grand and picturesque outline on that region, and upon 

 the lines of which are situated the most striking of the lakes of 

 the north-west of England. 



Although no Lower Silurian rocks, properly so called, occur 

 near Birmingham, one adjacent tract, the Lickey, offers a charac- 

 teristic example of the lowest of the Upper Silurian rocks, in the 

 form of quartz-rock ; whilst the limestones and shales of Dudley, 

 and their beautiful fossils, surmounted by those of Sedgeley, are 

 very rich and characteristic of part of the overlying Ludlow and 

 Aymestry series. I am glad to find that the members of the 

 Dudley and Midland Geological Society will not only 

 communicate to us papers on the different organic remains of 

 these deposits, but will also point out the relations of these rocks 

 to others in the west, where the whole Silurian system is more 

 fully developed. We shall also, I hope, have fresh illustrations of 

 the effect of the eruptions of the basaltic and igneous rocks of the 

 Rowley Hills, and other similar bosses, upon the Palaeozoic strata 

 which they penetrate. 



Above all, the mining public and proprietors in the Midland 

 Counties will, I am certain, be well instructed by the evening 

 lecture to be given by my friend and associate Professor Jukes, 

 who so distinguished himself, by his descriptions and maps of this 

 his native district, as justly to entitle him to be placed at the head 

 of the geological Survey of Ireland, which for many years he has 

 conducted with great ability. He can, no doubt, indicate to you 

 the extent to which profitable works in coal are likely to be carried 

 out, by sinkings through that Lower Red Sandstone of the central 

 counties which is now termed Permian, a name proposed by my- 

 self in 1841, as taken from a large province in Russia, because I 

 there found sandstones and limestones of the same age, extending 

 over a region much larger than France. The sinkings, which 

 were successfully made through this deposit at Christchurch by 

 the late Earl of Dartmouth, only four miles to the west of Birming- 

 ham, induced me, twenty-seven years ago, to write thus: — " It is ? 

 indeed, impossible to mention this enterprise, without congratula- 

 ting geologists on the effects which their writings are now produ- 



