— 
(ABSTRACT.) 
A Problem for Cheshire Geologists. 
BY PROF. JOHN W. JUDD, F.R.S., Sec. G.S. 
Read November 27th, 1878. 
FTER some introductory remarks on the advantageous 
position of the City of Chester as a centre for geological 
research, attention was called to the proofs which exist of 
enormous masses of strata having been removed by denudation 
from a large part of the surface of the British Islands, 
The Carboniferous rocks are now confined to a number of 
separate basins or coal-fields, yet careful research has demon- 
strated that these now isolated coal-fields were once continuous, 
and that they have been separated from one another by up- 
heavaland denudation. Even in the Highlands of Scotland an 
outlier of the Carboniferous formation has been detected ; this 
little patch having escaped removal by denudation through being 
covered by two thousand feet of basaltic lavas in Oligocene 
times, and by being subsequently thrown down by faults 
among the hard crystalline rocks of the Scottish Highlands. 
It thus appears that the distribution of Carboniferous strata 
in the British Islands, at the present time, is very different to 
what it originally was, and the same is true of all the younger 
formations. 
Both on the East and West coasts of Scotland patches of 
Poikilitic or New-Red-Sandstone strata have been found pre- 
served through the action of faults, or by being buried under 
great floods of lava. 
Of the Rhaetic, a very interesting fragment, forming a 
gigantic boulder, occurs at Linkstield, near Elgin. This frag- 
ment, now quite isolated, appears to indicate the former 
existence of strata of this age in the neighbourhood, and that 
portion of such beds has escaped denudation ‘down to a very 
recent geological period. It may be interesting to call to mind 
that very similar Rhaetic strata, containing beds of coal, occur 
in Scania, the southern province of Sweden. 
