Vol. 56.] BUNTER PEBBLE-BEDS OF THE MIDLANDS. 299 



idea of any continuity between the pebble-beds of the Central and 

 Southern areas. 



(4) Lake District and the Pennine Range. — Perhaps we 

 might find materials enough in the Pennine Range for the sand, but 

 neither the quartzites, nor the quartz-felspar grits, nor the tour- 

 maline-rocks, nor the bulk of the felstones * occur in the Lake 

 District, while it contains many rocks which we do not find in the 

 Bunter conglomerate. 



(5) The Midlands and the adjacent Covered Region. — 

 The outcrops of Charnwood, Hartshill, the Lickey, and the Wrekin 

 districts afford neither the right felstones nor the right quartzites. 

 They do not include (and I have studied all) either the quartz- 

 felspar grit or tourmaline-rocks. Charnwood rocks, though they 

 have been detected in the Permian breccias of Leicestershire, do 

 not, so far as I know, occur in the Bunter, and the characteristic 

 felstones, which should be easily recognized, certainly have not 

 reached Staffordshire. A quartz-felspar grit, though not of the 

 right kind, was indeed struck beneath Keuper at Orton, in North- 

 amptonshire, 2 but the borings at Burford in Oxfordshire, in the 

 London area, in Essex and Suffolk, have not given a hint of the 

 occurrence of any of the above-named rocks. They have only 

 proved the existence of certain Palaeozoics in great folded masses, and 

 made it probable that the rest represents other systems of that era. 

 The opponents, however, of a supply from the north urge that the 

 rocks may be there, but buried. Omne ignotum jpro magnifieo is a 

 true saying, as we shall presently see. Can any great quantity of 

 the necessary rocks have been exposed in the early part of the 

 Trias ? The position of the Keuper at Charnwood, Hartshill, the 

 Lickey, the Wrekin, and Orton shows this to be impossible. If it 

 were so, we should expect their fragments to be abundant in the 

 Permian breccia of Leicestershire, which is not the case. 3 Neither 

 here, nor elsewhere in the Keuper, nor in the Lias, is there so much 

 as a hint that large masses of these peculiar rocks existed anywhere 

 in Central, Eastern, or Southern England. Hence, I maintain that 

 even if the region where the Bunter was deposited had been inter- 

 rupted or bordered by rocks of the right kinds, these must have 

 formed comparatively small islands or insular ridges. 



But, if this be true, then the Bunter deposits cannot be derived 

 from Midland material, and yet be of fluviatile origin. We may, I 

 presume, take it for granted that they are not a confluent group of 

 little deltas. Prom Lancashire, all round the southern end of the 

 Pennines to beyond the north of Nottinghamshire — I speak from 

 personal knowledge — though slight local differences, as is to be 



1 I believe there are none, but as there is a slight similarity in one or two 

 cases, I prefer the more guarded statement. 



2 H. J. Eunson, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xl (1884) p. 490. 



3 See H. T. Brown, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xlv (1889) p. 1 ; & T. G. 

 Bonney, ' Midland Naturalist ' vol. xv (1892) pp. 25 & 49. 



