Professor J. W. Gregory — Deep Bore at Seascale. 149 



the great thickness of this upper sandstone. The reference of 

 2,047 feet of sandstone, with only one 5 foot band of shale, to the 

 St. Bees Sandstones is at least doubtful ; and the possibility that this 

 upper Seascale Sandstone may belong to the Keuper and represent 

 the Kirklinton Sandstone must be considered. The Triassic beds 

 beneath the drifts of Walney Island, 17 miles along the coast south- 

 eastward from Seascale, have been transferred from the horizon of 

 the St. Bees Sandstone to the Keuper. 1 The Keuper appears to be 

 represented along the southern coast of Cumberland by its lower 

 sandstones at Seascale and by its upper marls at Walney Island. If 

 this suggestion be correct, the Keuper Sandstones are much thicker 

 at Seascale than near Carlisle ; but such an increase may be reason- 

 ably expected approaching the basin that no doubt existed to the 

 west of Cumberland. 



The Kirklinton Sandstone is very different in character from the 

 St. Bees Sandstone; and if samples of the upper sandstone from the 

 bore could be found the question could probably be at once settled ; 

 and if this note lead to the recovery of any sample of the core from 

 the thick upper sandstone its publication will be well repaid. 



Fortunately, beside the beach at Seascale there is a scar of red 

 sandstone, which is doubtless an outcrop of the upper sandstone of 

 the bores. I owe to the kindness of Mr. Brockelbank, the station- 

 master of Seascale, a collection of specimens from this exposure. The 

 commonest rock is a red friable stone which crumbles readily beneath 

 the fingers, and is a sandrock rather than a sandstone. Some of the 

 specimens are more compact, and are entitled to be regarded as sand- 

 stone. In some the material has been cemented by a siliceous cement. 

 Most of the rock is red, but some of it is white or greyish in colour. 

 All the specimens are crowded with wind-rounded grains of quartz, 

 and they have few*er grains of felspar. The specimens received show 

 no layers of white mica. There are many specks stained dark brown 

 by peroxide of manganese ; and in two of the specimens some of 

 the quartz grains have regrown into crystalline forms. These 

 characteristics are not those of the St. Bees Sandstone ; they occur 

 in both Penrith Sandstone and Kirklinton Sandstone, some hand 

 specimens of which are indistinguishable. The presence of the Penrith 

 Sandstone at this locality is so improbable that of these two formations 

 the Seascale beds would certainly belong to the Kirklinton Sandstone. 

 Microscopic sections cut from three varieties of the rocks from the 

 scar at Seascale show that they are strikingly different from 

 the St. Bees Sandstone, and agree in all essential characters with the 

 Kirklinton Sandstone. This outcrop therefore supports the inference 

 from the bore record that the upper thick sandstone below Seascale 

 belongs to the Keuper, and may be correlated with the Kirklinton 

 Sandstone. The great thickness of the Ked Sandstone Series at 

 Seascale is therefore less surprising than if the bore had been begun 

 in the St. Bees Sandstone. 



1 Geol. Surv. England and Wales. Map 4 miles to 1 inch. Sheets 5, 6, 1907. 



