456 JS. B. Woodward — Inversion of Carhoniferous Strata. 



forward with great interest to the facts which he is enabled from 

 time to time to bring forward ; nevertheless I may be pardoned for 

 still differing from his general conclusions, inasmuch as the facts at 

 present made known appear to me neither to upset my own theory, . 

 nor to establish that advocated by Mr. McMurtrie. Indeed it is 

 only due to him to observe that he does not consider the question as 

 finally settled, although he brings forward facts which seem to him 

 to militate against the theory I ventured to propose. 



Mr. McMurtrie remarks that " in the case of the Luckington area 

 the workings of the Mackintosh pit have proved beyond doubt that 

 the faults shown on the western end, the south side, and probably 

 also on the north side of the Limestone, do not exist. Only one 

 fault has been discovered there, and it runs in a north and south 

 direction, crossing the eastern end of the patch." This, he adds, 

 '' has been well ascertained to be a downthrow west of 750 feet." 



Although this evidence is highly important, it does not annihilate 

 the theory that the Limestone itself is the relic of a mass dropped 

 into the position by the agency of one main fault, and then the 

 boundary of the Limestone and Coal-measures can only be repre- 

 sented as an abrupt and faulted one. 



In regard to the masses of Limestone at Vobster, there is no 

 direct evidence either for or against the theory which requires faults. 



But even the mining records, although they furnish important 

 facts, are in themselves scarcely adequate to explain the great move- 

 ments in the strata, for their evidence is after all somewhat limited 

 and restricted. And in all efforts to solve the mystery, it is very 

 necessary to bear in mind what are the facts and what the inferences, 

 and in Mr. McMurtrie's, as well as in my own diagram-sections, the 

 imagination has necessarily been brought into scientific use to com- 

 plete the picture. 



Since my paper was published the re-survey of the Lower Secondary 

 and Palgeozoic rocks of the Mendip country has been completed, 

 and the new edition of Sheet 19 has been published, while I have 

 reviewed the subject again with the benefit of all the facts thus 

 brought together, collecting some important evidence which I had 

 not fully weighed before, and which seems to me to throw a side- 

 light, as it were, upon the faulted-anticlinal theory. 



In so disturbed a tract of ground as this portion of the Somerset- 

 shire Coal-field, one must interpret the grand earth-movements in a 

 large way, for the numberless contortions and twistings in the Coal- 

 measures themselves are but the exaggerated representatives of great 

 folds in the older and more stony strata. The Lower Coal-measures, 

 for the most part easily squeezed up and crumpled, cannot in them- 

 selves explain these phenomena, and therefore a study of the folds 

 that are readily to be traced out in the Carboniferous Limestone and 

 in the Old Ked Sandstone is very necessary before we attempt to 

 picture the amount of disturbance in the district. This evidence 

 seems to me the more important, because, as Mr. McMurtrie on his 

 theory admits, "we cannot pretend to trace in detail the process 

 of elevation, folding over, and settling down, which must then have 



