126 MR. E. W, BINNEY ON THE PERMIAN AND 



Measures to investigate^ which nobody will, if he knows it, 

 explore more than once, we have not anything like the 

 chance of knowing barren Coal-Measures like a rich and 

 profitable series of workable beds. 



All mining engineers dishke what they term " red 

 ground," and do not trouble themselves much with inves- 

 tigating strata containing little or no coal, and their in- 

 vestigation is left to the geologist. Even many of the 

 latter dislike examining red clays and sandstones, usually 

 very barren of organic remains, and not at all enticing 

 to collectors of pretty specimens. 



The occurrence of a series of strata lying between the up- 

 permost Coal-Measures yet noticed and the lower soft sand- 

 stone of CoUyhurst, and generally unconformable to both 

 such Carboniferous and Permian strata, is now pretty well 

 proved in some districts, as at Whitehaven, Astley, Allesley, 

 Moira, and other places. I think a series of Coal-Measures, 

 from which Mr. Edwin Baugh, of Bewdley, has obtained a 

 valuable collection of coal-plants, will also come into this 

 division, as was supposed would be the case by my esteemed 

 friend Dr. Geinitz, who says in his ^Dyas^ * " he had not ob- 

 tained any certain information as to the existence in Eng- 

 land of a lower ' Rothliegende,^ or in general of any 

 lower division of the Dyas. From the observations previ- 

 ously made in these pages, it appears that the absence of 

 the hornstone porphyry {' Felsitporphyr ' proper) just in 

 those districts of England has a bearing upon this question. 

 It is repeatedly remarked that the existence of most of 

 the porphyries are linked to the lower period of the Dyas, 

 and, vice versa, that the formation of the lower ' Rothlie- 

 gende ' stands in close relation to the porphyries," 



" The existence in England of the lower ' Rothliegende ' 



* " Dyas or Permian Formation in England" (translation from ' Dyas,' 

 &c., of Dr. Geinitz), Transactions of Manchester Geological Society, vol. iii. 

 p. 144. 



