Basin of the Eden and north-western Coasts of Cumberland, ^c. 401 



It onl}' remains for me to notice the importance of the lower red sandstone 

 in another point of view, entirely distinct from the former. All who have 

 written on our south-western coal fields, have noticed the total break of con- 

 tinuity between their component strata and the overlying series : and in the 

 beautiful illustrations accompanying the paper of Dr. Buckland and Mr. Cony- 

 beare*, it is impossible to point out the highest members of the inclined coal 

 measures, in as much as an indefinite number of them maj/ possibly be buried 

 under the superior horizontal deposits. In Shropshire there is, I think, no 

 such break of continuity, the gap being filled up by the lower red sandstone. 

 Again, though the lower red sandstone of Yorkshire is, on a great scale, 

 unconformable to the coal measures, and ought, on that account, to be consi- 

 dered as the base of the new red sandstone series ; yet there are places in that 

 county, where, for twenty miles together, there is no trace of any want of 

 conformity ; and the lower red sandstone (containing, as already stated, a few 

 coal plants) forms a true connecting link between the highest coal grits and 

 the group of the new red sandstone f. 



Considering, then, that the red sandstone group sometimes forms a passage 

 into the coal series, — that the fossils of the magnesian limestone are very nearly 

 the same generically, and sometimes specifically, with the fossils of the carbo- 

 niferous limestone J;, — that the grits of the coal measures in the North of En- 

 gland are not unusually of a red colour, — that on the confines of Scotland the 

 lowest division of these coal grits alternates with red gypseous marls, and 

 passes downwards into beds of red sandstone and red shale, nearly, if not 

 exactly, on the parallel of the old red sandstone §, — considering all this, I think 

 that the phsenomena exhibited by our lower secondary deposits lend some 

 support to a classification now generally adopted in Germany, which regards 

 the whole carboniferous group but as an integral part of a great formation 

 of red sandstone, commencing with the old, and ending with the new red 

 sandstone series. The zoological argument certainly gives some consistency 

 to this arrangement. 



I do not, however, mean to deny the full propriety of the classification of 

 the same great groups, now adopted by English geologists. It is good, 

 because founded in nature ; and each country ought to be described without 

 any accommodating hypothesis, according to the type after which it has been 



* Geological Transactions, Second Series, vol. i. p. 21 i. 



t Ibid. vol. iii. p. 57. No. 5. I Ibid. p. 119. 



§ The description in the text was derived from phaenotnena, observed in 1830, in the valley of 

 the Tweed. The gradual passage of the coal measures into the old red sandstone is still more 

 strikingly exhibited on the coast of Scotland, north-west of St. Abb's Head. 



