206 A. H. Cox and A. E. Trueman— 



Charnian axis, and again by one of ns in the recently recognized 

 Melton Mowbray uplift/ 



It will be noticed that the axial lines of the flexures change in 

 direction from east-west at Melton Mowbray to north-west — south- 

 east at Market Harborough, then to approximately north-north- 

 west — south-south-east at Daventry and at Banbury, and finally 

 to a north-south direction in the two cases of the Vale of Moreton 

 and the Winchconibe structures. The variation in the direction of 

 the different axes may be ascribed to splitting and fingering-out 

 southwards of the main axis of post-Triassic uplift, the Pennine 

 axis. The fingering-out of the post-Carboniferous pre-Permian 

 Pennine uplift has been described by Professor Kendall - and by 

 Professor Fearnsides,'^ and it was ascribed by the latter writer to 

 a lagging of the eastward-moving folds as they approach the 

 buried area of older rocks which we know to underlie East Anglia. 

 If, as the structures indicate, the Triassic and Jurassic movements 

 followed the lines of the earlier pre-Permian movement, the radial 

 arrangement of the fold-axes is readily explained. The existence 

 of such a radial arrangement serves to account for the increased 

 number of anticlinal areas in the south and east as compared with 

 the central Midlands. If it were possible to differentiate and map 

 particular horizons in the thick Keuper Series, as has been accom- 

 plished by Dr. Matley '' over part of Warwickshire, it would probably 

 prove easy to trace all the folds from the Jurassic rocks across the 

 intervening Keuper to the Palaeozoic areas, and so to see the south- 

 ward splitting of certain of the fold-axes. 



Further, it should be noted that, while the Nottinghamshire, 

 Warwickshire, and South Staffordshire Coalfields all have a north- 

 south alignment, due to post-Triassic movements which have affected 

 the Mesozoic cover, the Palseozoic rocks in each coalfield show 

 the presence of other axes due to older north-westerly movements 

 oblique to the present alignment. For example, the Warwickshire 

 Coalfield has two marked Charnian anticlinal axes, each of which 

 brings up Cambrian rocks. One of these axes is on the present 

 north-eastern margin of the coalfield at Nuneaton and the other 

 on the western margin at Dosthill,'' so that the structure within 

 the coalfield is complex, due to two systems of uplifts which cross 

 one another obliquely, one pre-Triassic and one post-Triassic. Now 

 in each case it is probable that while the north-south post-Triassic 

 movements were in progress, there was simultaneous posthumous 



1 Cox, Phil. Trans., ser. A, vol. 219, Appendix, 1919, p. 124. 



2 Report of the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies, pt. ix, Apj^endix iii, 

 1905. 



^ " Some Effects of Earth-movement on the Coal Measures of the Sheffield 

 District," Part II : Trans. Inst. Min. Eng., vol. li, pt. iii, 1910, p. 107 (with 

 references). 



■* Matley, " The Upper Keuper (or Arden) Sandstone Group and Associated 

 Rocks of Warwickshire " : Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. Ixviii, 1912, p. 269. 



* Geology of the Country around Lichfield (Mem. Geol. Surv.), 1919, p. 7. 



