Report of Meetings for 1888. By J. Hardy. 215 



sickeningly of the shambles. The limestones take the colour very 

 evenly, fossils included. A large part of East Cumberland is 

 occupied by these Stained Carboniferous beds. Thus in the bed of 

 the River Line, within a few miles of where you were, you can 

 walk for miles on the upturned edges of sandstones, encrinital 

 limestones, shales, and stigmarian clays, all more or less stained, 

 and with just as much claim to be classed as New Red as the 

 sandstones to which you referred in your letter. Geologists of 

 limited experience are very liable to be deceived by this 

 coloration. 



" The fault which was pointed out to you in the Railway Cutting 

 near Penton bridge is the same nearly E. and W. dislocation 

 which you again saw below the Linns. The direction of its 

 down throw, but not the amount, is known. You will readily 

 understand that as it brings stained sandstones against unstained 

 the down throw must be on the side which shews the colour, the 

 sandstones on the other side having lain too deep to be reached 

 by the saturation of red peroxide. The same line of reasoning 

 shews the fault to be of Post Permian age — i.e. subsequent to 

 the staining. But like many other faults of N. England it may 

 have existed previous to the deposit of the New Red, and have 

 increased its throw afterwards. In fact it is possible that the 

 strains which produced these faults have in some instances not 

 ceased even yet, they need not have been produced by any one 

 sudden convulsion. This Penton fault by the way was for a 

 a long time deemed to represent the Pennine Fault of 

 England. This view has not been borne out by my survey of the 

 adjacent parts of East Cumberland. 



" The position of the Canonbie Coal-field has long been a puzzle. 

 It is denoted in Dr Arch. Geikie's Geological Map of Scotland 

 (1876) as true Coal Measures. This it certainly is not. More 

 probably it is a local development of coal seams in the strata 

 which in East Cumberland represent the Carbonaceous Group of 

 North Northumberland, being thus not far from the horizon of 

 the Scremerston Coals. The limestones of the Penton Linns etc., 

 belong to the same division of the Carboniferous Limestone 

 series. But when I speak of these beds as of the same general 

 age as the Scremerston Coals, I must not be understood as in- 

 dicating strict contemporaniety. The Carbonaceous Beds of 

 North Northumberland are a thousand feet thick. In North 

 Tynedale they are at least 2500 feet thick, and in East Cumber- 



