=, 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 49 
in Cumberland during a visit made in 1842, with Mr. Hopkins; at Cannington Park 
in Somersetshire, by Mr. W. Baker of Bridgewater ; in the stringcourses of the Ro- 
man castle at Richborough, made of Kentish rag; _in the roof of a cromlech of dolo- 
mite at St. Nicholas, near Cardiff, and in the rock work in Mr. Dillwyn’s garden of 
mountain limestone brought from Gower. Dr. Buckland exhibited specimens of 
limestone reck from several localities, showing perforations occupied by snails, and 
grooves or furrows leading to the perforations, and he insisted that these were unlike 
those produced by any marine animal, or by atmospheric causes. The perforated 
rocks were stated to be only found in districts affording a rich vegetation, and were 
always met with at the junction of a slate region, with one entirely composed of lime- 
stone, and near luxuriant herbage. Dr. Buckland attached great importance to the 
perforations at Richborough Castle, which, he said, afforded a measure of the time 
necessary for such opergtions; the deepest holes he had seen in limestone rocks 
rarely exceeded three sabes, and he considered it probable that these had occupied 
as many thousand years in their formation; the holes were only found in the hardest 
limestone rocks, because in softer limestones they would be obliterated by atmo- 
spheric action. 
On the Coal Deposits of the Asturias. By 8. P. Pratt, FE.R.S. 
Mr. Pratt gave a general account of a section taken from the neighbourhood of 
Leon in a north-west direction to the coast passing through Oviedo. The strata 
rise from beneath tertiary deposits which cover the plains of Leon and Castile, at an 
angle of 30°, which soon becomes nearly vertical, dipping north by west. They con- 
sist of numerous alternations of grit and shale with thin beds of Jimestone, and con- 
tain within about three miles of their rise a bed of good coal, nearly nine feet thick. 
Between this point and the summit of the Pass, a distance of five leagues, several 
extensive faults occur, by which the dip is more than once reversed, and several large 
mountain masses of limestone appear, underlying the grits, &c.; this limestone con- 
tains numerous fossils which indicate a period older than the mountain limestone, 
although several species are found intermixed, which can scarcely be separated from it. 
Hard grits and shales, highly inclined, succeed, and form the higher parts of the Pass, 
extending about a league beyond it to the north, after which coal plants are found 
abundantly in the grits and shales; no coal however is seen until near Pola de Lena 
situate about four leagues from the top of the Pass; from hence following the road 
to Oviedo, in a distance of ten miles, more than seventy seams of good workable coal 
are crossed ; near the upper part of the series a bed of conglomerate occurs, formed 
of rolled masses of grit, limestone, and coal; another such deposit, probably ex- 
ceeding 1500 feet in thickness, appears near the lowest part of the series, in which 
the coal boulders are more abundant, varying from the size of an egg to a foot in dia- 
meter, and possess the same character with the coal of the associated beds; one good 
coal-seam uccurs in the conglomerate, and two or three below it. The coal deposits 
are terminated by a narrow valley, beyond which the limestone rises from beneath 
them toa considerable elevation; a depression of the surface soon after occurs, form- 
ing a plain of cretaceous deposits of the Hippurite period, upon which the city of 
Oviedo stands, and which extends for twenty or thirty miles east and west. Beyond 
Oviedo to the north, the limestone again rises, and coal deposits appear between this 
oint and the coast ; in one of these the coal forms beds of from three to seven feet, 
interstratified with the limestone, which, with the shales that occur in it, contains an 
abundance of fossils, chiefly shells and corals, with but few traces of plants, whilst 
those before mentioned in the series south of Oviedo, were chiefly Calamites, Sigillarie, 
and Lepidodendra. Another of these deposits, containing the same fossils, crops 
out on the sea-shore near the.port of Aviles, which is to form the termination of the 
_ North of Spain Railroad to Madrid. It appears therefore that, besides extensive coal- 
beds corresponding with those of England and other countries, this province pos- 
 Sesses a considerable deposit belonging to an earlier period, which was probably the 
_ source of the boulders occurring in the conglomerate of the upper series. Connected 
_ with the coal, and always below it, are several beds of hematite, one of which is ex- 
traordinary, the pure unmixed ore being fifty feet thick, and extending for a consider- 
able distance; it appears from its mineralogical character to have been a mechanical 
or aqueous deposit. 
1845. E 
