Vol. 67.] PERMIAN TO THE TRIAS IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. 95 



' Permian Middle Marl ' of adjacent maps) underlying the Upper 

 Magnesian Limestone, says : — 



' A good section of these sandstones may be seen in a lane between Wood- 

 house Hill Farm and Holbeek Woodhouse. Here there are between thirty 

 and forty feet of soft red sandstone in thick beds, except about six feet at the 

 centre, which consists of thin alternations of sandstone and marl. Another 

 section may be seen in a road-cutting about ten chains to the south-east of 

 Woodhouse Hill Farm, consisting of unconsolidated red sand containing a, few 

 pebbles, and interstratified with thin beds of more consolidated sand. The 

 thickness of the sand is from twelve to fifteen feet.' 



The presence of pebbles is of interest, as they are quite absent in 

 the Permian Marl between Nottingham and Warsop, but are not 

 uncommon in breccia-bands in the Lower Mottled Sandstone. Under 

 the microscope the sand is seen to be quite similar to that from 

 the Lower Mottled Sandstone of Mansfield (see p. 91). If the 

 sandstone seen in the road-cuttings is regarded as Bunter, the 

 limestone becomes a local lenticle in it — quite comparable to 

 that noticed by Fox-Strangways at Warsop Vale, in the Permian 

 Marl, or to one of the ' skerries ' in the same marl at many places 

 farther south. Moreover, the sudden expansion of the Permian 

 Marl outcrop coinciding with its change in lithoiogical character 

 so greatly at variance with the uniform character of the bed between 

 Cuckney and its termination at Nottingham, is at once explained 

 if the upper part of the ' Marl ' is regardi d as Lower Mottled. 



Of the beds between the Lower and the Upper Magnesian 

 Limestone in the district between W r elbeck and Tickhill (Sheet. 82 

 N.E.), which have again changed their name and are now called 

 the Middle Marls and Sandstones, Aveline l says : — 



' These beds, consisting of red marls and soft sandstones of various colours, 

 sometimes containing small pebbles, divide the Lower from the Upper 

 Magnesian Limestone. They lie somewhat unconformably on the former, and 

 there is no good section in this district showing a passage upwards into the 

 latter. ... At Ratcliff there are beds of red sandstone, which might easily 

 be mistaken for the Xew Red mottled sandstone of the neighbouring districts, 

 if it were not that the strata at Ratcliff are overlaid by red marl ; whereas the 

 red and mottled sandstone of the Bunter beds is always overlaid bv thp 

 Pebble Beds.' J 



The outcrop of these Marls and Sandstones is very variable in 

 width, and at Letwell, where the Upper Limestone outcrop widens 

 greatly, it becomes proportionately narrow. Aveline 2 remarks that 

 here the thickness has diminished to 20 feet, as compared with 

 more than twice that thickness at Shireoaks. 



Here it is to be noticed (1) that the Middle Marls and Sand- 

 stones are unconformable to the beds below, as we have seen to be 

 the case elsewhere ; (2) that the sudden increase in width of the 

 Upper Limestone outcrop coincides with a marked diminution of 

 the Marls and Sandstones, as if they were replaced by it ; and (3) 

 that the Eatcliff beds would have been called Bunter, if sand- 

 stone, instead of marl, had been found above them. 



1 W. T. Aveline, 1880 (No. 2) p. 18. 



2 Ibid. p. 19. 



