of Cumberland near the Solivay. 411 



each, other of the rocks above the St. Bees Sandstone, etc. On this 

 account, my own views (as those of the worker on the Geological 

 Survey in this district) were allowed to be given by me in a paper 

 read at the Geological Society in 1881, on "The Permian, Triassic, 

 and Liassic Hocks of the Carlisle Basin " (Q.J.G.S., vol. xxxvii, 

 May, 1881). 



The difficulties preventing any thorough settlement of the question 

 of the relations of the Triassic rocks overlying the St. Bees Sandstone 

 to each other arise from the surface of North Cumberland being so 

 much covered by Glacial Drift, alluvium, and other superficial beds. 

 In the belt of ground near the boundary-line between the Perrno- 

 Triassic and Carboniferous formations the St. Bees Sandstone may be 

 seen here and there in the banks of rivers, or in quarries, where the 

 overlying drift is thin, though it is seldom wholly absent. But 

 nearer the Solway, north of a straight line drawn from the coast 

 between Maryport and Allonby to Carlisle, and west of the Eden, the 

 surface is wholly covered by superficial beds of various kinds. And 

 along the coast, from the spot just mentioned to Silloth, Bowness, 

 and Carlisle, may be seen expanses of raised beach, blown sand, and 

 other recent deposits, but no rocks of Permo-Triassic age appear 

 except at Bockcliff, north of the Eden, and near its mouth. The 

 Lias outlier, west of Carlisle, forms a plateau entirely veiled by 

 Glacial Drift, so that the only sections showing Lias are very few and 

 small, in the banks of tiny streams. Near Bowness, on the Solway, 

 a boring showed the surface beds to consist of 41 feet of Glacial Drift. 

 Southward, near Abbey Town, a boring showed the surface beds to 

 be 12 ft. 6 in. of alluvial clay above 186 feet of Glacial Drift (Geol. 

 Surv. Mem.). 



The boring near Bowness was made in the year 1809; that near 

 Abbey Town between November 14, 1875, and May 18, 1876. But 

 for these two borings the existence of hundreds of feet of Gypseous 

 Shales lying upon the St. Bees Sandstone, in this district west of 

 Carlisle, would be unknown. In the Bowness boring were found 

 (beneath the Glacial Drift) 367 feet of Gypseous Shales ; and in the 

 Abbey Town boring 734 ft. 6 in. of them above St. Bees Sandstone, 

 in which the boring ended. Eastward of Bowness and Abbey Town, 

 the late E.. B. Brockbank, the discoverer of the Lias in Cumberland, 

 kindly obtained for me a brief record of a boring at Orton, in the 

 Lias area, made in the year 1781 (Mem., p. 22). This boring was 

 for coal, the dark Lias shales having been mistaken for Coal- 

 measures down to a much later date. At the surface were three 

 fathoms of drift, then were found stones, "mostly bluish," and 

 evidently Liassic, to a depth of 38 fathoms, and then "red stone 

 or clay sometimes mixed with veins -of white till they came to 

 60 fathoms ". The evidence of the Bowness and Abbey Town borings 

 thus decidedly suggests the presence of at least 22 fathoms of 

 Gypseous Shales beneath the Lias at Orton, as the information 

 obtained from the Orton boring. 



East and north-east of Carlisle, in a country less invariably drift- 

 covered than the district westward, is seen the soft, red, false-bedded 

 Kirklinton Sandstone. It is best seen in the River Line, at and 



