Prof. E. Hull—The Permian and Trias. 493 



TQapping this district ofificially, and Lad opportunities for observation 

 and deduction which Mr. Strahan could not have obtained. 



As a matter of fact, I have visited all the sinkings which he 

 describes, and another which he does not describe, viz., one at 

 Abram near Winwick, in which beds of calcareous marl with lime- 

 stone bands are passed through below the New Red Sandstone, and 

 from which I myself collected numerous small shells of Permian 

 age of a kind which are to be found in these beds wherever they 

 occur along the border of the Coal-field, such as ScMzodus, Turbo, 

 Axinus. etc., fossils which prove beyond question that these beds (as I 

 have shown in one of my papers) are the representatives of the Mag- 

 nesian Limestone of the North-east of England. These fossiliferous 

 beds I regard as the equivalents of those referred to by Mr, Strahan, 

 and nowhere do they occur in the New Red Sandstone. 



I would ask Mr. Irving whether he has consulted the Survey 

 Memoirs of the South Lancashire Coal-field, those of Prescot, Wigan, 

 Bolton, Oldham, and Manchester, and of Stockport, and if so, 

 whether he deliberately rejects the evidence therein detailed regard- 

 ing the existence of these Upper Permian beds.^ 



Mr. Binney, who first determined the age of these beds, and had 

 with admirable industry collected the details of every available 

 section from Stockport on the east to Liverpool on the west, placed 

 the question of their age beyond doubt, both by evidence of uncon- 

 formity to the Trias above, and to the Carboniferous beds below, as 

 well as b}'^ palaeontological evidence.^ On the question of the uncon- 

 formity to the New Red Sandstone, the sections along the valley of the 

 Mersey, depending partially on borings, and partly on visible evidence, 

 first made out by Mr. Binney, and afterwards verified by myself,^ is 

 conclusive, even if it stood by itself. They show the Permian Marls 

 with bands of limestone 129 feet thick at Heaton Mersey, the same 

 at Hope Hill, only 25 feet, and at Stockport nearly absent, as the 

 Pebble Beds of the Bunter rest almost directly on the Lower Per- 

 mian Sandstone.* This overlap is from west to east, and shows that 

 the Upper Permian Marls become thicker towards the Cheshire 

 Plain, along the eastern side of the Coal-field, though the converse 

 is the case on the Liverpool side. 



As regards the general question dealt with by Mr. Irving, I am 

 almost inclined to concur that there is but little -evidence to support 

 the view of a threefold division of the Permian beds. That there is 

 a two-fold division I no less strongly hold ; and if he will do me 



^ Mr. Irving mentions the name of Mr. De Ranee as a supporter of his views. 

 This I can scarcely credit. At any rate he must excuse my accepting his unsupported 

 statement. 



- Contained in several papers hut chiefly in the following, " On the Permian Beds 

 of the North-west of England," Mem. Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester, vol. xii. A 

 list of the fossils, and the general succession of the formations in S. Lancashu'e, will 

 he found in the " Coal-fields of Great Britain," 4th ed., p. 198. 



3 '' Geology of the Country around Stockport, Macclesfield, etc.," Mem. Geol. 

 Survey, pp. 34-5 



* Such thick beds of marl as those here stated nowhere occur in the Bunter Sand- 

 stone. I do not recollect throughout the whole of Lancashire and Cheshire even 

 seeing a marly band more than about six or eight feet in thickness. 



