502 E. Wilson — Age of the Pennine Chain. 



the same Bed Eock Fault elsewhere, viz. near Macclesfield and 

 Congleton, displaces Upper Keuper rocks. To get over this dif- 

 ficulty, then, Professor Hull assumes that the Eed Eock Fault 

 is the result of two independent displacements, the first Pre- 

 Permian, the second Post-Triassic. To this style of reasoning I 

 object : in the first place, that it is unphilosophical to base an argu- 

 ment on assumptions ; in the next place, that on the hypothesis of 

 two movements for the Eed Eock Fault, the failure of participation 

 in the second of such movements by the Anticlinal Fault shows that 

 faults may run parallel to one another and to great anticlinals with- 

 out being contemporaneous ; and lastly, that on the assumption that 

 the Eed Eock Fault, the Anticlinal Fault and the Pennine Chain 

 were coeval, and that the Eed Eock Fault has undergone a second 

 displacement, there is yet no evidence to show that it was not the 

 second of such movements that for the first time faulted the Permians 

 near Stockport and that the earlier displacement of the Eed Eock Fault 

 was, with the Anticlinal Fault and the Pennine Chain, Pre-Permian. 

 Having now disposed of the theory of a Post-Permian origin of the 

 Pennine Chain, I proceed to the consideration of the evidence I 

 have been able to gather together in favour of a Pre-Permian 

 upheaval. 



I. The great Yorkshire Coal-basin was evidently formed before 

 the commencement of the Permian period, for all along the eastern 

 borders of tbe exposed portion of the Coal-field, wherever the Coal- 

 measure strata are seen to pass under the Magnesian Limestone, the 

 easterly dip of the Coal-measures is more or less evidently greater 

 than that of the Permians. Now, as the North and South axis of 

 the Coal-field runs parallel with the Pennine axis, we may safely 

 assume that these had a common origin. Consequently the Pennine 

 Chain is also Pre-Permian. In some magnificent sections, recently 

 opened out by railway extension at Kimberley, near Nottingham, 

 the Middle Coal-measures may be seen clipping north-east at angles 

 varying from 5° to 10° or 15° beneath Permians (Marl-slate, and 

 Lower Magnesian Limestone) that dip east at about 1°. In con- 

 sequence of this greater inclination of the Coal-measures, any par- 

 ticular seam of Coal is found at constantly increasing depths going 

 east. The " Top Hard " or Barnsley seam, for instance, which, at 

 Kimberley, is only 284 feet below the Permians, is 630 feet beneath 

 the same at Cinderhill, two miles to the east. Again, this Coal at 

 Clowne is 890 feet deep, but at Steetley, which lies about three 

 miles further east, it is 1590 feet down to it. " All along the edge 

 of the escarpment of the Magnesian Limestone," says Prof. Hull, 

 "and for a short distance beyond, in Notts and Derbyshire, as far 

 North as Botherham, the Coal-seams are found to dip eastward at 

 a greater angle than the Limestone itself, which (with the Lower 

 Eed Sandstone) rests unconformably on the Coal-measures." 1 



II. The Marl-slates, slowly but surely, alternate in a westerly 

 direction as if approaching a mai'gin. In some recent unsuccessful 



1 Coal-fields of Great Britain, 3rd edition, 1873, p. 245. 



