xl PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



kindness of my colleague, Professor Ramsay, however, I am enabled 

 to notice an important, though as yet unpublished, contribution to 

 the geology of the Permian districts of the Midland Counties, one 

 with considerable economic bearings. 



In all existing published maps the actual upper limit of the 

 Permian rocks south of Derby and North Staffordshire is merely 

 guessed at. These beds are often inserted where they do not exist, 

 and omitted over large areas where they should be inserted. 



They have now been clearly mapped and accurately defined around 

 the Tamworth, the Coalbrook Dale, the Forest of Wyre, the Shrews- 

 bury, and part of the North Wales coal-fields. A large area has in 

 consequence been taken from the supposed Bunter sandstone and 

 mapped by Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Howell as belonging to the Per- 

 mian rocks in the country lying between Tamworth and Leamington, 

 in part of which, at Exhall, a Permian Calamite, and casts of shells 

 having Permian affinities, have been found; by these means, then, geo- 

 logists have been able to support palseontoiogically what previously 

 was maintained by Professor Ramsay on purely physical grounds. 

 These facts are also important, since they prove that the Labyrinth- 

 odon described by Dr. Lloyd in the Reports of the British Associa- 

 tion (Birmingham) 1849, is a Permian reptile, and not, as he sup- 

 posed, from the Bunter sandstone. 



Through the course of last year important additions have been 

 made to our knowledge of the Bunter sandstone, by working it out 

 in four subdivisions in the districts that lie between Chester, the 

 Abberleys, Warwick and Nottingham. Over large parts of this area 

 there is found to be great constancy in the lithological character of 

 these divisions, and by their aid the surveyors have been enabled 

 to determine numerous faults hitherto unknown, which frequently 

 repeat the same strata for many miles. 



The supposed thickness of the New Red Sandstone will conse- 

 quently be much reduced in places, and this, taken in connection with 

 accurate measurements of the extent and thickness of the Permian 

 strata, may at no distant date lead to important economic results, in 

 the determination of the depth at which the coal-measures lie under 

 large tracts of the New Red Sandstone area, where there can be little 

 doubt that it will by and by be successfully sought for. 



A great step has been made towards an explanation of some of the 

 organic phsenomena of the Oolites by Professor Morris, whose me- 

 moir " On some Sections in the Oolitic District of Lincolnshire," 

 communicated to the Society in June last year, throws new and A-alu- 

 able light on the relations of the southern to the northern oolites in 

 England, and rectifies several misconceptions about the comparative 

 order of the strata in different districts. As this paper, one of the 

 most important in its general bearings laid before us during the past 

 year, is printed entire in our Journal, I shall make no abstract of its 

 details, but merely offer a few remarks on its general bearings. 



The marine faunas of the Oolitic epoch indicate at least three 

 great and widely-spread assemblages of types, each exhibiting a ge- 

 neral and easily recognizable, facies. These aspects may be termed 



