364 Geological Society. 



deposit, though now in the centre of England, was accumulated upon 

 a line of coast, and must have been formed in shallow water, subject 

 to the flux and reflux of tides. Though we admit, in this case, the 

 littoral nature of the deposit, there are many other strata, the rippled 

 surfaces of which, cannot be received in proof of the same mode of 

 accumulation ; since, like appearances occur in rocks, which from their 

 imbedded fossils, as well as from their structure, seem to have been 

 formed in very deep seas*. 



Your late President, Professor Sedgwick, after an interval allotted 

 to the study of the Eastern Alps, has resumed the arduous task, 

 which he had brought so nearly to completion, of explaining the 

 varied and complicated relations of the oldest secondary and transi- 

 tion rocks of the North of England. His first memoir during the 

 past session, is a description of longitudinal and transverse sections, 

 through a portion of the carboniferous chain between Penigent and 

 Kirkby Stephen. In this communication he shows that the mountain 

 limestone, though consisting of many beds separated by shales and 

 sandstones, may be divided into two groups, of which the " great 

 scar limestone " is the lower, having an average tliickness of more 

 than five hundred feet, and containing Orthocerata, Trilobites and 

 Ammonites. The younger group contains five beds of limestone, of 

 which the highest, or twelve-fathom limestone of the miners, is asso- 

 ciated with many strata of sandstone and shale, and three or four seams 

 of workable coal. The whole of this calcareous system is overlaid 

 by a complex group connected with the millstone grit, and in- 

 terlaced with beds of shale and one or two seams of coal. By five 

 transverse sections drawn across the prolongation of the great Craven 

 fault, described by Mr. Philli])s, as well as by himself in former me- 

 moirs, the author points out the peculiar relative movements of the 

 carboniferous and grauwacke chains, anterior to the deposit of the new 

 red sandstone. 



From his general conclusions we learn, — that the carbonaceous for- 

 mations become much more calcareous in their range to the north — 

 that from the nature of the associated organic remains, coal has, in 

 some places, been produced in deep seas, and in other places in shallow 

 estuaries — that changes in the mineral character of the contempo- 

 raneously formed strata, are usually accompanied by changes in the 

 species of the fossils, whether animal or vegetable — and, lastly, that 

 the valleys in the carboniferous chain, near the lines of section, are 

 not fissures which have been deepened by erosion, but true valleys of 

 denudation. 



The last paper, by Professor Sedgwick, is on the red sandstone of 

 the valley of the Eden, and of the coasts of Cumberland and Lanca- 

 shire. In a section from Whitehaven to St. Bee's Head, he describes 

 the carboniferous strata as being overlaid by a lower red sandstone, 



• Abstracts of the papers reviewed by \Tr. Murchison in this Address, 

 which have been read before the Geological Society, will be found in our 

 reports of the Proceedings of that body, in Fliil. Mag. and Annals, vol. ix. 

 pp.37<)-380, 44.0—449; vol. ix. pp. 45— a I, 14.3— li.i, 4.S3— 4.37; and 

 the jiresent volume, pp. 55 — b?', and '^81 — 28.), — Edjt. 



rontainintr 



