Correspondence—Professor Edward Hull. 185 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE AGE OF THE PENNINE CHAIN. 
Srr,—When Mr. Wilson asserts that I have assailed two of his 
arguments, I beg of him to recollect that he is the assailant; I the 
defendant. 
- Both Mr. Harris Teall and Mr. Wilson maintain that between the 
Permian and Trias there is no important hiatus or unconformity. I 
am aware that this has for some time past been an article of faith 
with some Nottingham geologists, who are content to take the geo- 
logy of the Nottingham district as a synopsis of that of the whole 
of England, if not of the British Isles and Europe. Mr. Wilson 
now admits, what I had previously suspected, that he has no personal 
knowledge of the Permian beds of Lancashire—at least not those of 
the Stockport district; and I would venture to recommend him, 
before proceeding further with this subject, to run over to that not 
very distant region, and examine the sections in that district, which 
he will find fully described in the Survey Memoir on ‘“ The Geology 
of Stockport, etc.,” pp. 838-5. He will then find—1st. That there is 
a decided unconformity between the New Red Sandstone and the 
Lower Permian Sandstone—inasmuch as the Permian Marls with 
limestones, which are almost overlapped at Stockport (allowing the 
New Red and Permian Sandstones to come into contact), are separated 
at Hope Hall by 25 feet, and at Heaton Mersey by 129 feet of Upper 
Permian marls with limestones. 
2nd. He will find that in supposing the Permian Sandstones on the 
west of the Pennine ridge to be represented by such beds as the “‘ Red 
Rock of Rotherham,” he has been (to use his own expression) 
“singularly unfortunate” in his controversy with me at least. 
Both Mr. Teall and Mr. Wilson ought to recollect that, as regards 
the age of the sandstones of Stockport, Collyhurst, and other places 
in Lancashire and Cheshire, their Permian age and unconformity 
to the New Red Sandstone has been proved repeatedly by Mr. 
Binney ; and the views of myself, as representing to some extent the 
Geological Survey of that district, are simply in corroboration of Mr. 
Binney’s very able statements. 
Now I must again press my point. How can my opponents 
account for the absence of beds of shingle in the Permian sandstone 
of Stockport and Hast Cheshire, if the Carboniferous rocks formed a 
ridge at the time of their deposition ? 
Mr. Wilson asserts that “geologists, not omitting the Survey 
authorities,” have long since abandoned the belief in the Permian 
age of the Lower Red Sandstone of Yorkshire and Durham,” and 
amongst the authorities for this statement I am referred to the able 
Memoir on the Yorkshire Coal-field, p. 482. On turning to the 
Memoir, I find that the sandstones here referred to are “the Red 
Rock of Rotherham,” which, in accord with the authors of the 
Memoir, I regard (and for a long while have regarded) as an upper 
member of the Coal-measures, This will be seen on reference to 
