14 Sir R. I. Murchison’s Address on the 
In sinking through the extensive coal tracts around Manches- 
ter (at Dukinfield), where one of the shafts already exceeds in 
depth the deepest of the Durham mines, rigorous attention will, 
I hope, be paid to the discovery of the fossils which character- 
ize each bed passed through, not merely to bring about a cor- 
rectly matured view of the whole history of these interesting ac- 
cumulations, formed when the surface of our planet was first 
furnished with abundant vegetation, but also for the practical 
advantage of the proprietor and miner, who, in certain limited 
areas, may thus learn where iron-ores and beds of coal are most 
likely to be persistent. In carrying out his survey-work through 
the northwestern coal-tracts of Lancashire, to which the large, 
or six-inch, Ordnance-map has been applied, one of the Secreta- 
ries of this Section, Mr. Hull, has done good service in accurately 
defining the tracts wherein the elevated coal-deposits are covered 
by drift only, in contradistinction to those which are still sur- 
mounted by red rocks of Permian and Triassic age. In seeing 
that these are eagerly bought by the public, and in recognizing 
the great use which the six-inch survey has proved in the hands 
of the geological surveyors in Scotland, our friends in and around 
anchester may be led to insist on having that large scale of 
survey extended to their own important district. By referring 
to the detailed delineations of the outcrops of all the Carbonif- 
erous strata in the counties of Edinburgh, Haddington, Fife, and 
Linlithgow, as noted by Professor Ramsay and Messrs. Howell 
and Geikie, the coal-proprietors of England will doubtless recog- 
nize the great value of such determinations. 
Concerning the Permian Rocks, which were formed towards 
associates. 
When Professor Sedgwick, thirty-four years ago, gave to 
geologists his excellent Memoir on the Magnesian Limestone of 
our country, as it ranges from Durham, through Yorkshire, into 
Nottinghamshire, he not only described the numerous varieties 
of mineral structure which that rock exhibits, noting at the same 
time its characteristic fossils, but he also correlated it, and its un- 
derlying beds, with the Zechstein, Kupferschiefer, and Rothe- 
todte-liegende, of Germany. But whilst this is the true order in 
both countries, there is this considerable difference in England, 
that along the zone where the Magnesian Limestone exists as a 
mass, and where Sedgwick described it, the inferior member of the 
sd is a thin band of sandstone, usually of a yellow color (the 
Ponterfact rock of William Smith), which in its southern extrem- 
ity, near Nottingham, is almost evanescent. In many parts of 
Germany, on the contrary, and notably in Thuringia and Silesia, 
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