538 Geological Society: — 



years * before the above-cited date; and Mr. Napier's illness and 

 subsequent death induced a still further delay. This statement is 

 due to Mr. Millar, who has been looked upon as responsible for the 

 delay referred to in our opening remarks.] 



LXXII. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 152.] 



February 23, 1881. — Robert Etheridge, Esq., E.R.S., President, 

 in the Chair. 

 HPHE following communications were read : — 

 -*■ 1. A Letter from Dr. John Kirk on an Earthquake shock in 

 the island of Zanzibar. 



2. "The Permian, Triassic, and Liassic Rocks of the Carlisle 

 Basin." By T. Y. Holmes, Esq., E.G.S. 



The district discussed in the author's paper was worked over by 

 him when engaged on the Geological Survey, and consists of those 

 parts of Cumberland and Dumfriesshire which adjoin the Solway. 

 Its southern boundary is, approximately, a line ranging from Mary- 

 port to Rose Castle on the river Caldew, and touching the Eden 

 about two miles above Wetheral. On the east and north-east its 

 limits are the immediate neighbourhoods of the junction of the 

 rivers Eden and Irthing, Hethersgill on the Hether Burn, Bracken- 

 hill Tower on the Line, and the Border boundary on the rivers 

 Esk and Sark ; and in Dumfriesshire the small tract south of a line 

 ranging from the junction of Scots Dyke with the Sark on the north- 

 east, to Cummertrees on the south-west. 



The lowest bed in this area is the great Upper Permian or St.- 

 Bees Sandstone, which occupies a belt of country in the neighbour- 

 hood of the outer boundary. Directly above St.-Bees Sandstone, in 

 the wesj: of the district, lies a formation consisting of shales with 

 gypsum, which, though 700 feet thick in the neighbourhood of 

 Abbey Town, is nowhere visible, but is known solely from borings — 

 the country west of the Caldew, and of the Eden below the junction 

 of the two streams, being thickly drift-covered and almost section- 

 less. In the east of the district the St.-Bees Sandstone is overlain 

 directly by a soft, red, false-bedded sandstone, called by the author 

 Kirklinton Sandstone, from the locality in which the rock is best 

 seen, as well as its relations to the under- and overlying beds. 

 But while there is no evidence of any unconformity between the 

 St.-Bees Sandstone and the overlying Gypseous Shales in the west, 

 there is evidence of a decided unconformity between the St.- 

 Bees and Kirklinton Sandstones in the east. In Carwinley Burn 

 (for example), which runs into the Esk at Netherby, only from 

 200 to 300 feet of St.-Bees stone was seen below the outcrop of 

 the Kirklinton, instead of the 1000 to 1500 feet which probably 

 exist about Brampton on the one hand and in Dumfriesshire on the 

 other. Yet Carwinley Burn affords an almost continuous series of 

 sections, from the (non-faulted) Permian-Carboniferous junction to 



