66 REPORT—1863. 
within the mountain-limestone system. <A basaltic bed, that chars the coal, under- 
lies the seams at Hartley Burn and Midgeholme. 
In considering the connexion between the two great faults, we are led to the 
question of geological age. If the faults had taken place at the same time, the 
age of both might have been fixed during the Permian period, viz. after the de- 
osition of the magnesian limestone, and before that of the New Red Sandstone. 
or, at one end, there is the overthrow of the magnesian limestone at Cullercoats ; 
and at the other, the almost vertical disturbance of the magnesian conglomerates 
at Brough, and the unconformable deposition of the Eden New Red Sandstone 
against the mountain limestone and the igneous rock. The deposition of New Red 
Sandstone upon the small Ingleton Coal-field is also noticed. As this sandstone 
is wanting at the mouth of the Tyne, and as the Tynedale Fault is not observed to 
penetrate through the chain into the Eden New Red Sandstone, there is negative 
evidence to the effect that the fault might have occurred after the Permian system 
was complete. On the other hand, the two faults might apparently have occurred, 
as one physical event, or as nearly contemporaneous, after the deposition of the 
coal-measures, which are dislocated by the Tynedale Fault, and before that of the 
New Red Sandstone. In that case, the coal ought still to have existed on some 
parts of the mountain chain. But there is not a vestige of coal on that chain 
throughout its entire length, from the base of the Cheviot to its southern limit. 
The elevation, therefore, of that chain, and the crisis of the Pennine Fault, must 
have happened either before the deposition of the coal, or after the chain had been 
denuded of coal already deposited. But the Tynedale Fault is supposed to throw 
down the coal 1200 to 1800 feet at its intersection of the chain, not far from its 
axis. At any rate, it is thrown down there from a considerable height. It can 
hardly, therefore, be doubted that the coal once existed throughout the chain upon 
the millstone-grit, and was washed off during the partial submergence of the 
chain. In that case, it would follow that the Tynedale Fault, occurring after the 
deposition of the magnesian limestone, and before that of the New Red Ranimine, 
is older than the Pennine Fault, and that the latter fault, with all its volcanic con- 
sequences, might have occurred within the same geological epochs, but after the 
effects produced by the Tynedale Fault. This denudation of coal would of course 
imply an intermediate subsidence of the mountain-limestone system, during which 
the coal of the chain, both north and south of its depression and burial along 
the line of the Tynedale Fault, would be washed away. When the chain again 
began to rise after the denudation of the coal, the present abrupt termination of 
Tindale Fell, towards the north, and its great height above the plain at Hartley 
Burn might be occasioned by the unequal elevation of the surface in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Tynedale Fault, on a different axis which prevails, north of that 
fault, to the German Ocean. 
There appear to be direct evidence in the disturbed magnesian conglomerates, 
near Brough, that the Pennine Fault, which followed the final elevation of the 
chain, may have occurred after the dislocation of the magnesian limestone at 
Cullercoats, 
Professor Phillips, while admitting the objection arising from the above disturb- 
ance, and the great difficulty of the problem, inclines to the conclusion that the 
Pennine and Craven Faults preceded the magnesian-limestone epoch, and that the 
Tynedale Fault was of somewhat later date. He finds also a close analogy between 
the small Ingleton Coal-field and that of Hartley Burn, But there is this differ- 
ence, that, though qreey thrown from an almost equal height, the Hartley Burn 
coal is not absolutely detached, like that of Ingleton, from other large coal tracts 
of the same kind, but is connected directly and continuously with the Newcastle 
Coal-field; that the seams do not, as at Ingleton, thin off to nothing, without any 
apparent cause, but are quite as thick there as at any other place along the line, 
and are cut off by dislocations of great extent. It is possible that the Ingleton coal 
may, from causes operating on a limited tract, have escaped destruction, and been 
afterwards thrown down by the Craven Fault. The existence, therefore, of this 
line of coal seems to show that the Tynedale Fault must have preceded the Pen- 
nine Fault. Asa general rule in this district, the east and west veins are older 
than the noyth and south yeins; and the samo rule may prevail with respect, 
