of Cumberland near the Solway. 413 



St. Bees and Kirklinton Sandstones in Carwinley Burn (Mem., p. 30) 

 showed the Kirklinton Sandstone to be resting unconformably on 

 that of St. Bees ; while the narrow belt of country occupied by the 

 St. Bees Sandstone, at the north-eastern end of the Carlisle Basin, 

 between Carwinley Burn and the Paver Line, contrasts so strongly 

 with the much broader areas occupied by it around Wetheral and 

 Brampton as to suggest a very decided unconformity between the 

 two sandstones. 



In short, the Kirklinton Sandstone seemed to me (like the still 

 narrower and thinner Stanwix Shales overlying it) to be in all 

 probability confined to the north-eastern end of the Carlisle Basin, 

 while the Gypseous Shales occupied a much wider space. And 

 having been formed in a lake basin, and not in a shallow and 

 irregular area, were much more likely to be an older formation 

 than the Kirklinton Sandstone resting unconformably on that of 

 St. Bees. 



Since the publication of the Geological Survey Memoir I have 

 not heard of any additional deep borings near Carlisle or in North 

 Cumberland. But when "The Structure of the Carlisle-Solway 

 Basin and the Sequence of the Permian and Triassic Bocks ", by 

 Professor J. W. Gregory, was discussed by the Geological Society, 

 April 29, 1914, Mr. G. ~W\ Lamplugh pointed out that " the westward 

 prolongation of the Triassic basin of Cumberland had been proved in 

 several borings in the north of the Isle of Man ". He added that he 

 had examined the cores of these borings, and that ' ' they indicated 

 the presence of at least 700 or 800 feet of gypsiferous and saliferous 

 Keuper marl resting upon the St. Bees Sandstone, some hundreds of 

 feet thick, below which there was a thin and inconstant series 

 of Permian marl and sandstone with Brockram " (Abstracts of Proc. 

 Geol. Soc, May 7, 1914). 



The above evidence of Mr. Lamplugh is evidently most valuable in 

 favour of the view that the Gypseous Shales of the Abbey Town and 

 Bowness borings should rank as the formation immediately above the 

 St. Bees Sandstone. On the other hand, the Kirklinton Sandstone, 

 which rests unconformably on the St. Bees Sandstone in the north- 

 eastern corner of the Carlisle Basin, and the Stanwix Shales overlying 

 it, are formations confined to that district, and simply illustrate the 

 local irregularities of the Permo-Triassic rocks. The resting of 

 the Lias outlier partly on .the Gypseous Shales, and partly on the 

 Kirklinton Sandstone and on the Stanwix Shales, where the two 

 formations last-named are thinning away to nothing, is surely nothing 

 startling to our notions of the possible in the matter of this local 

 position of the Lias. Por with rocks like the Triassic, formed in 

 areas so varied in their space and nature as those of Cumberland and 

 the Solway especially are, we should surely be prepared to meet with 

 local irregularities of this kind. Por instance, in the discussion 

 on Professor Gregory's paper at the Geological Society's meeting 

 last year, Professor O. T. Jones remarked that in parts of South 

 Wales " the Lias rested upon Carboniferous Limestone, but that was 

 after the various subdivisions of the Trias had been overlapped in 

 succession ". 



