T. C. Cant rill — Spirorbis- Limestones. 451 



Hamstead pits are 206, 329, and 795 feet above that horizon. It is 

 therefore not possible at present to identify any of the outcrops with 

 the bands passed through in the pits. 



Wauwickshire. 



During the years 1902-5 occasional visits to the neighbourhood of 

 Nether Whitacre, between Birmingham and Nuneaton, and a brief 

 sojourn near Maxstoke, a few miles farther south, gave me the 

 opportunity of looking for outcrops of Spirorb is -limestone in the 

 ' Permian ' rocks of the Warwickshire Coal-field. A Spirorhis band 

 has long been known to occur in the ordinary Coal-measures at 150 

 feet below the base of the ' Permian', and its outcrop was laid down 

 and described by Mr. H. H. Howell in the Geological Survey maps 

 and memoir fifty years ago.' Mr. C. Fox Strangways,^ too, in his 

 recent revision of the Baxterley district, obtained evidence of a second 

 band in tlie ordinary Coal-measures of that locality. But although 

 the Warwickshire 'Permian' rocks have hitherto not been known to 

 contain such limestones, as long ago as 1895 I made bold to claim 

 them as Coal-measures, on the grounds that from all the available 

 descriptions there was every reason to regai'd them as the equivalents 

 of the Salopian Permian of the Wyre Forest district,^ wherein I had 

 recently found a Spirorhi8-\\xn.e&tone and a thin coal-seam between 

 200 and 300 feet above the base of the group. Moreover, I find that 

 Mr. William Andrews, F.Gr.S., of Coventry, in 1890 published the 

 opinion that the Warwickshire ' Permian ' are red Coal-measures, 

 basing his conclusions apparently on the grounds of their lithological 

 resemblance to the beds proved at Hamstead Colliery.* 



Nether Whitacre. — But a passage in the Survey memoir on the 

 coal-field shows that over fifty years ago Mr. Howell himself actually 

 noticed a Spirorhis-lime^tone in the ' Permian ' rocks, though its 

 abnormal position with regard to the only known band (i.e. the one 

 150 feet down in the ordinary Coal-measures) misled him and 

 prevented his realizing the significance of his discovery. After 

 describing the outcrop of the band in the Coal-measures, Mr. Howell 

 says (pp. 28, 29)— 



"There can be little doubt that the limestone exists under the Permian rocks 

 between Arley Wood and Sybil Itill near Kingsbury, although it is impossible to 

 point out its precise position beneath that formation. There are, however, some 

 indications of its having been wrought at "Whitacre Hall, about halfway between 

 Arley and Kingsbury. It was certainly burnt there, for the old kilns remain, and 

 fragments of the limestone partially burnt are seen lying about the fields, but 

 whether it was brought from Arley Wood, or Kingsbury Wood, or quarried on the 

 spot, could not be ascertained, the works having been long abandoned. It is quite 

 possible that the limestone may have been quarried here, exposed by the denudation 

 of the Permian rocks." 



1 Sheets 62 S.E. and 63 S.W. ; also The Geology of the Warwickshire Coal-field, 

 1859, pp. 26-9. 



- Geology of the Country between Atherstone and Charnwood Forest (Mem. 

 Geol. Sm-v.), 1900, p. 20. 



^ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. li, 1895, p. 528. See p. 547. 



* See a paper entitled "On the Bore-holes at Coventry", read before the 

 Warwickshire Naturalists' and Archajologists' Field Club, March 26, 1890. (The 

 reprints are issued without the particulars necessary for more exact citation.) 



