Oorrespondence—UMr. W. T. Aveline. 87 
and there in the valley bottoms. The chief centre of activity prob- 
ably lay west of the centre of the island. 
Petrographical details of the andesites and anamesites, descrip- 
tions of groundmass and included minerals of each, and chemical 
analyses are given. As regards the age of the constituents, the 
Author arranges them in the following order, commencing with the 
oldest :—magnetite, olivine, augite, mica, felspar, népheline. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE ST. BEES SANDSTONE. 
Srr,—In the short notice in the last number of the GroLocioaL 
Magazine, of Mr. Goodchild’s paper on the above, read before the 
British Association at Edinburgh, I read that he considers the St. 
Bees Sandstone equivalent to the Bunter. I entirely disagree with 
him in this view. It is well known to those who are conversant 
with the Bunter Sandstone formation that it consists of the Upper 
Soft Red and Mottled Sandstone. The Pebble and Conglomerate 
beds and the Lower Soft Red and Mottled Sandstone, only the two 
lower divisions occurring in the North of England. These are well 
marked divisions, with beds totally unlike the St. Bees Sandstone. 
I believe it to be much more probable that the St. Bees Sandstone 
is a large development of the Red Marls, Sandstones, and Gypsum 
beds that lie between the Upper and Lower Magnesian Limestone 
in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, and known as the “ Permian 
Middle Marls and Sandstones.” There is a break between these 
Sandstones and Marls and the Lower Magnesian Limestone quite as 
large as between the St. Bees Sandstone and the Magnesian Lime- 
stone and Penrith Sandstone. But breaks between two formations 
are often only local, caused by thinning away of beds, and there is 
really no great unconformity between the Bunter Sandstone and the 
Magnesian Limestone series (now called Permian) of Yorkshire, and 
I should not be surprised that in some locality it was found 
that the one passed up into the other. I will not quarrel with Mr. 
Goodchild for calling these lower formations ‘Lower New Red 
Sandstone” (the old term) though I do not like it, for in Yorkshire 
these beds are chiefly limestone, but I must protest against the St. 
Bees Sandstone being called Bunter, a formation, I consider, on a 
higher horizon. W. Tarzor AVELINE. 
OaTLANDS, WRINGTON, SOMERSET, 
December 5th, 1892. 
ON THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN GEOLOGY AND PHYSICS. 
Srr,—The late Dr. James Croll, while contending that there was 
ample proof from geology that conditions suitable for life on the 
Earth must have existed “far more than twice 20 millions of years 
ago”! (the narrow time limit of 20 million years only being sup- 
ported by some physicists): nevertheless Dr. Croll could not solve 
the following difficulty. 
1 Dr. Croll’s paper in the Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, p. 317. 
