39 



Millstone Grit of the district, or examine the fissures and faults 

 or joints filled-in by them, and with the ores of Iron, without 

 being impressed (other circumstances being considered) with 

 the facts and conditions I wish to bring before you. I beheve it 

 to be not at all improbable that a lower member of the Permian 

 Group of Rocks than is now generally recognized around the 

 Bristol Coalfields, once existed, and has since been removed by 

 denudation. For we have evidence of Magnesian rocks, having 

 all the characters of the Permian of the North of England, 

 at many parts of the Basin, especially at Yate Rocks, where 

 the pale yellow hard finely laminated Limestones repose upon 

 the highly incKned beds of Carboniferous Limestone, which have 

 been planed away as smoothly as if done artificially. See Fig. 5. 



"I 



Fig. 5. — Section at Yate Rocks, showing Yellow Magnesian Beds resting upon Beds of Carb. 

 Limestone, which have been planed away in terraces. 



I believe these laminated yellow Magnesian beds are lower and 

 older than the remarkable patches of the anomalous Dolomitic 

 Conglomerate, which everywhere fringes and rests upon the 

 older rocks of the district, and which so fuUy testifies to a once 

 widely spread rock, whose Geological place in the series is still 

 here uncertain, and which the miners call the overlie, when sinking 

 to the Lower or Upper Coals through the Lias and New Red: its 

 place invariably being at the base of the New Red Sandstone 

 series that cover the sxuTounding edges of the north and south 

 basins, but which has been swept away in the centre of both, 

 thus clearly shewing us that this intensely hard Conglomerate 

 is now the mere remnant of a once widely-spread and continuous 

 sheet, patches of which are now left us. The waves of that age cut 

 back the perhaps rapidly depressing land or coast line, composed 

 as it was of Old Red Sandstone, Carboniferous Limestone, Mill- 

 stone Grit, Pennant, &c., aUke exposedat once and in succession; 

 for all these rocks are found abxmdantly constituting the mass 

 of the Conglomerate now left to us. No one can examine this 



