388 Prof. Sedgwick on the New Red Sandstone Series in the 



outline of the country, but also by the enormous masses of drifted materials 

 by which it is accompanied. It is no part of my object to describe these 

 materials in detail ; but I may here remark, that mingled with them, and 

 overlying them, are great bowlders of Shap granite, which have been drifted 

 over the hills and plains skirting the Eden from Appleby to the foot of Stain- 

 moor*; that enormous masses of Carrock Fell syenite and other crystalline 

 Cumbrian rocks have been drifted as far as the shores of the Solway Firth, 

 where they are found mixed with other great bowlders, brought by opposite 

 currents from the mountains of Dumfriesshire ; and lastly, that the red sand- 

 stone is often buried, for miles together, under great heaps of the old alluvial 

 detritus, which has modified all the external features of the region, and some- 

 times produced a fertility little known where the undisturbed rock is near the 

 surface. 



From the red cliffs of Maryport to St. Bees Head (a distance of thirteen or 

 fourteen miles, estimated in a straight line), the whole coast is occupied by the 

 coal measures, excepting one place a little north of Workington, and two or 

 three places near Whitehaven, where we find an intermediate sandstone, form- 

 ing, apparently, a connecting link between the true carboniferous and new red 

 sandstone groups. The red sandstone of St. Bees Head appears to dip con- 

 formably to the coal measures, from which it is separated, not only by the in- 

 termediate sandstone before noticed, but also by th6 magnesian limestone and 

 conglomerate which strike across the headland to Ben How quarry f, where 

 they are cut off by the valley of St. Bees, to the south of which the yellow 

 limestone is no more seen in Cumberland. 



Notwithstanding the position of the beds at St. Bees Head, it is obvious 

 that, when considered on a great scale, the formation is unconformable to the 

 coal series ; for the same beds, in their prolongation to Egremont, cross ob- 

 liquely over the range of the mountain limestone, and the new red sandstone 

 is expanded in irregular outliers far within the limits of the coal field|. 



Between Egremont and Gossforth, the formation appears to have undergone 

 a movement of elevation ; for its beds dip at a considerable angle to the west, 



bored seventy-four fathoms in search of coal. It is said that they passed through only fifteen 

 fathoms of red sandstone before they reached the coal measures. 



* It is well known that the bowlders of Shap granite have drifted over Stainmoor to the plains of 

 Yorkshire, and even as far as the eastern coast. They have also been drifted to the western coast 

 below Milnthorp in Westmoreland ; and they abound in the masses of gravel which are found near 

 the tops of the high hills between Sedberg and Kendal. t See Plate XXV. fig. 4. 



;{: These outliers will be laid down on a map to accompany a subsequent memoir on the White- 

 haven coal field. 



