Vol. 56.] STRUCTURE OF THE MALVERN" AND ABBERLEVT HELLS. 181 



also Joseph Lucas many years before. 1 The Pennine Chain has 

 clearly been subjected to more than one movement of elevation, 

 though the main folding occurred in pre-Permian times. It does 

 not appear certain, however, that this latter movement took place 

 chiefly in the interval between the Carboniferous and Permian 

 Epochs. Reference has been made (p. 177) to the unconformity 

 at the base of the Ilotherham Red Rock with its associated series of 

 Coal Measures. There is some reason to believe that these beds 

 represent the Upper Coal Measures, 2 but their stratigraphical relations 

 both to the older Coal Measures and to the Permian strata are still 

 insufficiently known. Further researches may show that a consider- 

 able uplift of the Permian area took place in Coal-Measure times, 

 and that the movements which threw the Coal Measures of the North 

 of England into basins had already commenced at that period. The 

 circumstance that in certain of the British coalfields the Upper Coal 

 Measures rest with apparent conformity upon the Middle Coal 

 Measures need present no insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of 

 this hypothesis, for while other areas were being raised these dis- 

 tricts may have been still subsiding and receiving deposits. Mr. De 

 Ranee, indeed, considers that the Lancashire Coalfield is a basin 

 formed contemporaneously with the Coal Measures. 3 



It is necessary to remark that, while I believe that the Hercynian 

 movement played an exceedingly important, and in places a pre- 

 ponderating, part in the formation of the coal-basins and of 

 associated regions of elevation, I would by no means contend that 

 the movements which took place in Coal-Measure times were solely 

 responsible for the completion of these basins and ridges. It is 

 readily admitted that in some cases movements (in the same sense 

 as the earlier movements) which took place after the deposition of 

 the Upper Coal Measures may have largely contributed to the final 

 result. The Trimpley anticline on the eastern side of the Forest- 

 of-Wyre Coalfield may be a case in point. In this interesting 

 district, briefly described by Mr. Cantrill, the Old Red Sand- 

 stone has been folded and overfolded, together with the overlying, 

 unconformable, older Coal Measures, and has sometimes been thrust 

 on to the latter. The overfolding has taken place from the south- 

 east, and the structure produced thus approaches that of Wallsgrove 

 Hill (pp. 165 et seqq.). It is not clear how far the Upper Coal Measures 

 share in the folding, and Mr. Cantrill considers that an anticline 

 which had probably commenced to rise by the end of Middle Coal- 

 Measure times was not completed till after the Upper Coal-Measur 

 times, and that the movement was most active immediately after 

 that period. At the same time he thinks it probable that the older 

 Coal Measures in the Forest-of-Wyre district were elevated into a 

 broad anticline ; that enormous erosion took place along a general 

 north-easterly and south-westerly line before the deposition of the 



1 Geol. Mag. 1872, p. 338. 



2 Mem. Geol. Surv. ' Geol. of Yorks Coalfield ' 1878, p. 481 ; & ' Geol. of 

 Parts of Notts, Yorks, & Derby ' 2nd ed. (1880) p. 12. 



3 Trans. Fed. Inst. Min. Eng. vol. xiii (1897) p. 301. 



