104 REPORT — 1859. 



Cheshire side. In other cases the coal appears to thin out as it approaches the 

 grit hills. Denudation as well as elevation seems to have taken place, and the 

 latter in some cases after the deposit of the red sandstone. In this Pottery coal- 

 field the numerous faults run, more or less, at right angles with the lines of eleva- 

 tion, and from southerly falls it has fortunately happened that the seams are more 

 widely attainable than they would have been without their occurrence. Some of 

 the (geologically speaking) highest beds of coal are worked about 700 feet below 

 the sea-level ; others, upon Axedge, exist 1000 feet above it, and these appear to 

 have been the first deposits. In this last narrow trough the coal strata seem bare 

 and dissected to the naked eye, being imperfectly covered with herbage and reposing 

 upon equally bare and jutting rocks of grit. The fossil Aviculo-pecten only appears 

 to occur in the lowest strata to the east, whilst the Microconchus carbonarius is 

 common in the upper. The coal-yielding beds may be said to consist of an upper 

 and lower series in the principal coal-field ; no known band of clay ironstone exists 

 in the latter ; though, in the present mineral-seeking times, an important bed of 

 earthy haematite has been found very low in the series. The ichthyolites, to be 

 mentioned, occur principally in the upper measures, as they are commonly found 

 in ironstone or its shales. Some layers seem to consist almost entirely of these 

 fish-remains with coprolites, but the former extremely fragmentary. The ironstone, 

 No. 4 from the surface, called the bassy mine, is a remarkable bed, and may be 

 identified through the whole area of the upper measures, being raised in enormous 

 blocks, marked on their surface by great impressions of Stigmaria, and by flattened 

 Uniones. 



One or two dykes of greenstone occur in the bunter sandstone to the south of 

 the Pottery coal-field, and metamorphosed grits at Mow Cop (Sax. or as well 

 Brit.) in the westerly ridge, and at Fenton Park ; the second greenish in colour 

 and enclosing round nodules of haematite. The drifts or gravels of North Stafford- 

 shire appear to be of, at least, four or five kinds : the northern drift with fragments 

 of Venerupis and other shells ; a second gravel with fragments of whitish chalk- 

 flints and sometimes Ananchytes ; both these gravels occurring in the southern 

 lower lands, but the first rather to the east and the second to the west ; next the 

 gravels of the bunter sandstone, often forming hills of a good elevation and com- 

 posed mostly of characteristic red quartz pebbles, marked by cloudy white spots, 

 greenstone, curious decaying agates, mountain limestone, and lower Silurian pieces, 

 as well as white quartz and black jasper, also grit and coal. On the area of th e 

 coal-fields a coarse gravel of less rounded pieces occurs, mountain limestone, grit, 

 and greenstone being the constituents ; also, in the surface clays, blocks or boulders 

 of greenstone or porphyry, red and white granite, and grit, more or less rounded, 

 and sometimes weighing several tons. From the sides of some of these valleys, 

 of the bunter sandstone formation, the rocks often jut out in a horizontal direction, 

 giving the idea that such valleys must have been formed by the action of water. 

 The millstone grit often presents smooth or polished surfaces (slickensides ?), but 

 this even in the quarry. 



Coal-plants, as Calamites, are frequent in the Permian. In the coal strata the 

 authors lately measured the but or trunk of a Sigillaria more than a yard across, 

 its roots being given off exactly in the cruciform way, and bifurcating at equal 

 distances of about a foot. When broken, these root-trunks presented an impression 

 very like the leaf of a Blechnum, but which they suppose is due to the compressed 

 processes given off from a central fibrous rod. They also appear to be compound. 

 It is also curious how many of the trunks of these trees contain other vegetable 

 remains in the clayey sandstone of their interior, such as large Calamites. Certain 

 heart-shaped bodies abound in the ironstone, with the mark of the insertion of a 

 hollow stem above : these the authors think may be the roots of Calamites or 

 similar plants, the cylindrical stems which seem to belong to them ending rather 

 obtusely, smooth, unjointed, and often containing pyrites of zinc. Then again are 

 found convex, hemispherical bodies, with a tubercular surface, and cellular within ; 

 smaller ones occurring gregariously. Circular or reniform markings occur in the 

 shale of the bassy mine, above alluded to, presenting somewhat the appearance of 

 a peltate or cordate aquatic leaf; but they go through several laniinse of shale. 

 There are also large grass-like leaves (Poacites P), a large and a small Ulodendron, 

 two Halonise, fine Asterophyllites and Sphenophylla, with other commoner fossils. ■ 



