T. V. Holmes— The Whitehaven Sandstone. 409 



Beck, and other rivers of West Cumberland. Again, the absence 

 of coals of any thickness above a certain horizon in the Coal- 

 measures gives no presumption whatever tending to show the 

 presence of unconformable Whitehaven Sandstone. On certain 

 horizons in coalfields it is usual to find few and thin coals, while 

 500 feet above or below they may become thick and numerous. In 

 other words, it is usual to find alternations of conditions tending at 

 one time mainly to the deposition of sandstones and sandy shales, 

 at another of more clayey shales and of coals. Yet Mr. Kendall 

 identifies as Whitehaven Sandstone measures distinguished only by 

 purple-grey colour and absence of thick coals. 



Towards the conclusion of his paper, Mr. Kendall remarks that : 

 " In the area lying immediately to the north-east of the Coalfield, 

 he [Mr. Holmes] has coloured as belonging to the Millstone Grit 

 and Carboniferous Limestone series, rocks which also belong to the 

 Whitehaven Sandstone series or Upper Coal-measures." 



It will be noticed that Mr. Kendall admits that the area in question 

 is '" north-east of the Coalfield," or, in other words, that Lower 

 Carboniferous rocks might naturally be expected there. When 

 working in that district I found in Shalk Beck an unusually good 

 series of sections, the beds consisting of sandstones and shales of 

 a reddish or purple-grey colour, with a high but variable dip of 

 from 15 to 60 degrees, and attaining a thickness of at least 700 to 

 800 feet. The direction of their dip was perfectly normal, looking 

 at them as Lower Carboniferous beds; and in lithological character 

 and in colour they resembled the Lower Carboniferous sandstones 

 and shales that I had been familiar with in the district generally and 

 in other localities. In short, I maintain that there are no grounds 

 whatever for supposing them to be other than ordinary Lower 

 Carboniferous sandstones and shales, such as would naturally be 

 expected there. Yet Mr. Kendall, without a single scrap of real 

 evidence in support of his view, asks us to consider these Shalk 

 Beck beds as the " Whitehaven Sandstone Series," which has ex- 

 panded from a thickness of 170 feet at Whitehaven to one of 700 

 to 800 feet thirty miles away ! It seems to me that to admit so 

 gigantic an assumption to be a bare possibility, is to make a very 

 handsome concession to Mr. Kendall. And as the onus probandi falls 

 upon his shoulders, I do not envy him the task of proving his case. 



It may be worth while mentioning here, that in 1888, Mr. Kendall 

 published a paper on " The Structure of the Cumberland Coalfield " 

 (Trans. N.E. Inst., vol. xxxii, p. 319, and vol. xxxiii, p. 121), 

 maintaining the general conclusions arrived at in his latest con- 

 tribution to the subject, In a short paper entitled " Notes on the 

 best locality for Coal beneath the Permian Rocks of North-west 

 Cumberland" (Trans. Cumb. and West. Assoc. 1883-4), I com- 

 mented briefly, inter alia, on Mr. Kendall's views as regards the 

 Whitehaven Sandstone, pointing out the necessity of complete 

 evidence of unconformity, and also that the sheet of sections illus- 

 trating Mr. Kendall's paper appeared to me to contradict his views. 

 Some remarks in reply, by Mr. Kendall, appear in Trans. Cumb. and 



