1869.] WAED KNARESBOEOUGH GRITS. 293 



and flinty, "with its joints lined with carbonate of lime. In no spot 

 along the edge of the coal-neld immediately east of Leeds have I 

 seen or found recorded in mining-sections any trace of a grit under- 

 lying the magnesian limestone. 



North and north-west of Barwick-in-Elmet an east and west 

 fault throws out the Coal-measures and brings up the millstone grit, 

 the upper member of which, the Rough Eock, is a coarse and fre- 

 quently crumbling grit, usually of a yellow colour, and traceable 

 almost without a break eastwards from Meanwood, north of Leeds, 

 to Kidhall Hall on the edge of the magnesian limestone, and again 

 seen in a denudation of the limestone at Bramham Park, where it 

 was taken to be Permian by Prof. Sedgwick. Polio wing the edge 

 of the limestone still further north, the various subdivisions of the 

 Third Grit, with an east and west strike, are successively passed over. 

 Under outliers of magnesian limestone, just south of the river Wharfe 

 and west of Collingham, these grit-beds appear for the first time of 

 a reddish colour in places, and have interbedded purplish micaceous 

 shales; these coloured beds, however, are altogether inseparable 

 from the uncoloured grits, sandstones, and shales occurring further 

 from the borders of the limestone. 



The Third-Grit beds across the valley of the Wharfe form a low 

 anticlinal, and on the north side their strike soon changes from an 

 east and west to a northerly direction as far as Plumpton and 

 Knaresborough. The order of succession in the grit-beds near 

 Spofforth is the following. Immediately underlying the limestone 

 is the red and purple grit of Spofforth, Plumpton, and Knaresborough ; 

 its top is not seen, but its thickness probably exceeds 100 feet. 

 Pelow this come some 50 feet or less of such shales as generally 

 occur in the millstone -grit series, followed by a sandstone, gritty in 

 some parts, and generally of a reddish colour, though not so markedly 

 coloured as the last-mentioned grit ; this rock, which may average 

 some 75 feet in thickness, passes down into sandy and flaggy shales, 

 in many parts having a tendency to be both gritty and of a purplish 

 tint; they contain also numerous worm- and molluscan tracks, and 

 frequently pass rapidly into beds of hardish stone : a good section of 

 these flaggy beds is seen in the railway-cutting about two miles 

 north-west of Spofforth station ; their thickness may be about 50 feet. 

 Next in descending order is a hard sandstone used for road-material, 

 and crowded in some parts with casts of Brachiopods, among the 

 most common of which are Ortliis resupiyiata and MicTielini, JStro- 

 'pliomena analoga, Productus, and Spiriferina cristata, determined for 

 me by Mr. Etheridge ; the thickness of this bed is about 30 feet. 

 Sixty feet of shale succeed, in turn underlain by what Prof. Phillips 

 has called the " Pollifoot coal-grit," for the most part a hard com- 

 pact sandstone containing a shale-band and thin coal-seam ; whole 

 thickness about 50 feet. Then follow some 400 feet of dark shales 

 overlying the Kinder or Pourth Grit, which is underlain by the Yore- 

 dale series cropping up as an anticlinal at Harrogate. 



The first and second of these beds of grit Prof. Phillips has thought 

 to be Permian. 



