A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



town water supply ; it passed through 226 feet 6 inches of these beds, 

 the upper of which were chiefly marls. 1 



These so-called Lower Permian rocks have yielded very few fossils ; 

 fragments of the cryptogamic plants Lepidodendrqn and Catamites have 

 been recorded from a quarry near Exhall, and silicified trees at Allesley 

 and Meriden. Obscure casts of a shell supposed to be Stropbalosia 

 occurred at the Exhall quarry, and remains of a labyrinthodont reptile, 

 Dasyceps bucklandi (Huxley), were discovered in a quarry at Kenilworth. 

 Some of these are preserved in the Warwick Museum. 



There is some reason to think that Spirorbis limestone bands may 

 occur in these rocks at Whitacre Hall (near Nether Whitacre), for 

 Mr. Howell * records that such limestone was formerly burnt there. 



Of late years evidence has been accumulating tending to show 

 that similar rocks in other districts are very closely related to the Coal 

 Measures. In the Wyre Forest coalfield 3 district in Shropshire, and also 

 in the North Staffordshire coalfield, 4 rocks in all respects similar to these 

 of Warwickshire contain Spirorbis limestones and thin coals. Nor is 

 there in Warwickshire any evidence of a lapse of time or of abrupt 

 changes of any sort at the base of these rocks : the Spirorbis limestone 

 band in the ordinary Coal Measures is everywhere present at about the 

 same distance below these ' Permian ' beds. The occurrence west of 

 Polesworth of what seemed a small isolated tract or outlier of these 

 rocks apparently situated on lower beds of the Coal Measure series gave 

 colour to the supposition that here the ' Permian ' rocks are unconform- 

 able to the beds below ; but this has been lately disproved by Mr. Fox- 

 Strangways, who finds that the supposed ' Permian ' here is a band of 

 red-coloured sandstone in the ordinary Coal Measures themselves. 



It thus becomes evident that the so-called Permian rocks of Salopian 

 type named thus from their typical development in Shropshire are 

 linked on to the Coal Measures both stratigraphically and palasontolo- 

 gically, and should therefore be included in the Carboniferous system. 



TRIASSIC 



The rocks we have been hitherto describing form an isolated area 

 surrounded on all sides by a great spread of red sandstones and marls 

 which constitute the Trias. The delta and lagoons and jungle swamps 

 of the Coal Measures had passed away ; the red ' Permian ' beds had 

 succeeded, deposited it would seem in a slowly sinking area of land- 

 locked lakes or almost wholly enclosed lagoons, the waters of which 

 were highly charged with iron salts and unfavourable to animal life. At 

 the close of this ' Permian ' period great movements took place which 

 resulted in the raising up of large areas of land, which were forthwith 

 subjected to erosion. There seems to have ensued a state of things in 



t Kenilworth>> Proc - Warwick. Vat. and Archil. 

 * 'Warwickshire Coalfield,' Mem. Geol. Survey (1859), pp 28 29 

 T. C. Cantrill, Quart. Journ. Geol. Sot. li. (,895), 528. W.' Gibson, ibid. Ivii. (1901), 251. 



