E. H. Howell— Red Rods in S.E. Durham. 11 



of the salt-bed, which was unfortunate commercially, but does not 

 materially affect the question under discussion. 



I recollect very well when resident at Darlington, Mr. Wilton 

 Allhusen bringing me a portion of the first core of limestone which 

 had been bored through, and asking my opinion whether the horizon 

 of the salt-bed had been passed, and whether there was any prospect 

 of success by continuing the bore-hole deeper into the limestone. 



I told him the fact of reaching the limestone after passing through 

 the red rocks without finding the salt-bed proved the latter tobe 

 absent, and that there would be no prospect of success by going 

 deeper into the limestone. But Mr. Alfred Allhusen was more 

 sanguine, and the boring was continued to a greater depth. The 

 result was that no salt-bed was found, but some very interesting 

 cores of limestone were brought up. 



I examined these cores, and on one occasion I was accompanied by 

 Mr. Howse, Curator of the Museum of Natural History, Newcastle- 

 on-Tyne, and Dr. Veitch, of Middlesborough. Mr. Howse saw that 

 the limestone was fossiliferous, and his well-trained eye at once 

 detected the small Axinus (Axinus dubivs), and it was also noted 

 that a roestone bed similar to one which occurs in the limestone 

 forming the cliffs at Hartlepool had been passed through. Here 

 then I think there is undoubted proof that the red rocks rest 

 upon the uppermost division of the Durham Permian, as at Seaton 

 Carew. 



I now wish to direct attention to the western outcrop of the red 

 rocks in the neighbourhood of Darlington, Leeming Lane (where 

 the Vale of Mowbray Brewery is situate), and Ripon. There we 

 have sandstone and marls underlaid by thick deposits of gypsum 

 (as much as 40 feet was proved at the well at the Vale of Mowbray 

 Brewery), which in turn rest directly upon the Permian Limestone. 

 Here, however, they rest, not upon the upper division — the Hartle- 

 pool beds — but upon the fossiliferous and compact limestone zone of 

 the Durham Permian— that division which immediately overlies the 

 Marl Slate. It is on these grounds that I think there is some 

 evidence of an unconformity, and that the red rocks may be 

 transgressive over the various divisions of the Durham Permian 

 Limestone from Hartlepool to Darlington and Leeming Lane. 



I may add a word upon the lowest set of beds — limestones, and 

 marls with gypsum and rock salt (14 ft.) — proved in the trial bore- 

 hole of Messrs. Bell Brothers at Saltholme beneath the main bed of 

 rock-salt. 



The late Director-General of the Geological Survey, Professor 

 (now Sir Andrew) Ramsay, in his Presidential Address to the 

 British Association at the meeting at Swansea in 1880, refers to 

 this lowest set of beds, and claims the 14 feet bed of rock-salt 

 proved beneath the limestone to be of Permian age. He says, " In 

 the North of England, at and near Middlesborough, two deep bore- 

 holes were made some years ago in the hope of reaching the Coal- 

 measures of the Durham Coal-field. One of them at Saltholme 

 was sunk to a depth of 1355 feet. First they passed through 



