66 Mr. Brockbank on 



On the Permians of the N.W. of England. Discovery 

 of Two Plant Beds in the St. Bees Sandstone, at 

 Hilton, Westmorland. By William Brockbank, 

 F.G.S., F.L.S. 



{Received November ijth, 1891). 



The late E. W. Binney contributed to the Proceedings 

 of this Society several papers on the Permians of the N.W 

 of England. These were the outcome of actual field work 

 continued over many years, and they laid the foundation 

 for what afterwards came to be accepted as the Permian 

 system, in the N.W. of England. 



In 1864 a joint communication by Sir R. I. Murchison 

 and Prof. Harkness was made to the Geological Society of 

 London, which summed up all the conclusions arrived at 

 by the Geological Survey at that date, together with the 

 researches of Prof. Sedgwick, Mr. Binney, and others who 

 had given this subject especial attention. This article pro- 

 pounded what was stated to be a new view of the aggregate 

 and component parts of the Permian group in Britain. By 

 this arrangement these rocks were placed in direct correla- 

 tion with their equivalents in Russia and Germany. In 

 particular the Zechstein (Magnesian limestone) or its 

 equivalents of great masses of superposed red sandstone, 

 were in the N.W. of England, removed from the New Red 

 Sandstone, or Trias, to which they had previously been 

 assigned, to the Permian system, considering them to be 

 the natural upper limit of the palaeozoic deposits. In many 

 Memoirs, published previously to this date (1864), these 

 rocks had been classed with the New Red Sandstone, a fact 



