of Cumberland near the Solway. 415 



inconsistent series of fragments might be detected here and there, by 

 deep borings, of still older Permo-Triassic beds than the St. Bees 

 Sandstone. In the opinion, however, of Professor Gregory (both as 

 expressed at the meeting of the Geological Society on April 29, 1914, 

 and in the Geological Magazine for June, 1915, in his paper on 

 " The Solway Basin and its Permo-Triassic Sequence "), the Solway 

 Basin should be treated as being practically non-existent. In the 

 Geological Magazine he remarks that it " cannot have such a simple 

 synclinal structure, for Carboniferous rocks occur at the surface near 

 the northern shore of the Eastern Solway ". Then follow interesting 

 details of a boring for coal at Redkirk, all the rocks pierced being 

 Carboniferous. And he considers the outcrop of Carboniferous rocks 

 at Redkirk "opposed to the synclinal theory of the Solway", and 

 adds that the existence of the St. Bees Sandstone in North- Western 

 Cumberland " deep below a thick sheet of Gypseous Shales, rests 

 on slender grounds which appear untenable ". Having been over the 

 whole district, and having traversed not only the roads but a very 

 large number of the fields, and examined the banks of the various 

 streams, I must reply that there is certainly sufficient evidence as to 

 the existence of the St. Bees Sandstone where it is shown on the 

 geological map. And that the deep borings showing the Gypseous 

 Shales above it in Cumberland have now the additional support of the 

 evidence of Mr. Lamplugh as to the deep borings in the north of 

 the Isle of Man, which also show Gypseous Shales above St. Bees 

 Sandstone. The result of deep borings since I was at work in 

 Cumberland has therefore been simply to show the much greater 

 range of the Carlisle Basin, and its greater importance as a geological 

 feature of the Permo-Triassic rocks there than I had anticipated. 



Then Professor Gregory is very doubtful as to the identification of 

 the sandstone in the Abbey Town boring, beneath the Gypseous Shales, 

 as the St. Bees Sandstone, and thinks it was in all probability Penrith 

 Sandstone. He notes, in connexion with this view, that though 

 I wrote on this district for the Geological Society in 1881 and for 

 the Geologists' Association in 1889, my first mention of having seen 

 the Abbey Town boring cores is in the Geological Survey Memoir of 

 1899. I was not aware of this omission till Professor Gregory noted 

 it. But in the papers mentioned it did not occur to me to mention 

 boring cores, simply because my knowledge of the geology of the 

 district and, I may add, that of my colleagues, J. G. Goodchild, of 

 the Eden Valley district, and R. Russell, of St. Bees and Whitehaven, 

 made the existence of the St. Bees Sandstone somewhere beneath the 

 surface at Abbey Town almost an absolute certainty. The boring 

 originated in a local belief that coal would be met with there at 

 a very moderate depth. Neither R. Russell nor I were consulted 

 before the Gypseous Shales were pierced through, and then the 

 appearance of sandstone, not coal, caused us to be asked to examine 

 the cores showing the beds from a depth of 945 feet to 1,020 feet. 

 We came to the conclusion that the lowest bed, 32 feet thick, was 

 " St. Bees Sandstone of the ordinary type " (Mem., p. 20). It seems 

 worth adding that we came to the conclusion that "the greystone of 

 the Caldew river-cliff appears to be represented in the boring by the 



