A. Strahan — Coal under New Red Sandstone. 435 



arranged in their original bedding planes, and held by a cement of 

 iron pyrites. I was informed that the unconformity between this 

 bed and the underlying Coal-measures was clearly visible in the 

 shafts ; the dip of the former was at 6° to the south-east, that of the 

 Coal-measures at 10° in the same direction. 



At a distance of 1 mile to the nortli-east, and still about the same 

 distance from the boundary of the Trias, three shafts are being sunk 

 by the Haydock Colliery Company, giving the following section : — 



feet. ins. 



Glacial Deposits 40 



Pebble Beds. Eed sandstone 259 



So-called Permian ( ^^^f''^^ '^^ ' ' «f f ^^^^ " 9 



( Hard brown sandstone 7 6 



Coal-measures. Eed Coal-measures 97 9 



413 3 



By the kindness of Mr. Glover, the manager of the Haydock 

 Collieries, and of Mr. Burns, who was in charge of these sinkings, 

 I was able to examine the lower beds of the Eed Sandstone and 

 their junction with the Coal-measures. The Pebble Beds in which 

 the sinking commenced, and which are exposed on the surface close 

 by, seemed to extend to a depth of 299 feet from surface. Though 

 pebbles were scarce, the stone contained rolled lumps of clay, and 

 resembled this subdivision in its hardness and general appearance. 

 The " soapstone " is a bed of red shale, of an ordinary Triassic type, 

 such as is met with in the Pebble Beds or in the Lower Mottled 

 Sandstone. The hard brown sandstone underneath it resembles the 

 Pebble Beds in containing fragments of shale and small grit, but 

 also shows the " millet-seed " grain, consisting of small round 

 grains of quartz, scattered through a finer compact matrix, which is 

 so often seen in the Lower Mottled Sandstone. 



The top of the Coal-measures, a bed of shale, showed signs of 

 having been broken up, and redeposited, for a depth of about 3 or 4 

 feet. The dip of the " soapstone " and hard brown sandstone is 

 towards the east at 1° or 8°, that of the Coal-measures in the same 

 direction at 13° or 14°. 



It seems probable that the " soapstone " of this Colliery is the 

 same bed of shale that was met with in the Bold Hall and Collins 

 Green Collieries, and which crops out at St. Helens Junction under 

 the name of Permian Marl. A comparison of the sections at these 

 four localities shows that this bed with the underlying sandstone thin 

 out with great regularity in proceeding from west to east. It shoukl 

 be noticed that the attenuation takes place in the sandstone as well 

 as in the marl. If they had been unconformahJy overlapped by the 

 Trias, the marl would have been overlapped first, the sandstone 

 retaining its thickness, except in those places whei^e, by the removal 

 of the marl in pre-Triassic times, it had been exposed to a similar 

 denudation. 



Three miles to the south of St. Helens Junction, and rather 

 farther from the Triassic boundary than these collieries, the Trias 

 was penetrated in a bore-hole, made in search of water near Farn- 



