BEITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



315 



ON THE TYNEDALE COALFIELD AND WHINSILL. 

 By J. A. Knipe. 



The Tynedale coal-field is of no very great extent, but from its being a pro- 

 longation of the true Northumberland and Durham coal, though at the distance 

 of forty miles west of the great deposit, saved by the great ninety fathom 

 fault, which is so well exposed on the coast at Callercotes, and as it is entirely 

 ignored in the Geological Society's Map, and every other, excepting the author's, 

 he thought it should be recorded in the reports of the meeting of the British 

 Association. The proprietor of the Tynedale coal-field is the Earl of Carlisle, 

 and the coal is worked to a great extent by Messrs. Thompson, of Kirkhouse, 

 near Brampton, who also work the Talkirs mines in Cumberland. 



The pit is called the " King Pit," " Midgeholme Colliery," and is situated on 

 the north side of the Eault, which has been proved to be a down-throw to the 

 north of one hundred and eighty fathoms, and as the mountain limestone of 

 Aldstone Moor is in juxta-position with the coal, the author conceives that the 

 down-throw here must ha considerably greater. The shaft is five hundred and 

 six feet deep, and the aggregate thickness of the five seams or beds of work- 

 able coal is twenty-three feet. Below the coal are thick beds of sandstone, 

 shale, and grit ; then thick beds of limestone ; then comes the coal of Blenkin- 

 sop mines ; again other intervening strata, succeeded by the thin beds of coal 

 of Holtwhistle in shale and sandstone ; then intervene coarse sandstone, 

 a thin bed of coal and grit, succeeded by rich ironstone nodules in thick beds 

 of shale. Again come thick beds of coarse sandstone and limestone, reposing 

 on interstratified trap — the great Whinsill. 



The Whinsill of Wall Town, near the Roman camp, Amboglanna Bardos- 

 wold, offers here a bold bluff escarpment to the north of near one hundred feet 

 in height. Portions of it assume a rude columnar structure ; it is, however, 

 much obscured by foliage. The Boman wall, which is here very perfect, and 

 six feet in thickness, crosses the summit of the escarpment. The Whinsill is 

 traceable to the German Ocean, and is seen again interstratified with the car- 

 boniferous limestone of Dunstonburgh Castle. 



ON THE CONTENTS OF THREE CUBIC YARDS OF TRIASSIO EARTH. 



By Charles Moore, Esq., F.G.S. 



Prom the extraordinary series of organic remains exhibited to the Section 

 by the author, and from the importance attaching to the mammalia, the reading 

 oi" this paper excited considerable interest. The author stated that several years 

 ago he suspected the presence of Triassic rocks in the neighbourhood of Prome 

 from accidentally finding in a roadside heap of carboniferous limestone a single 

 block of stone containing fish remains of the former age, but that for a long 

 time he was unable to discover it in situ. More recently, when examining 

 some carboniferous limestone quarries near the above town, he observed certain 

 fissures which had subsequently been filled up by a drift of a later age. One 

 of these was about a foot in breadth at the top, but increased to fifteen feet at 

 the base of the quarry, thirty feet below, at which point teeth and bones of 

 triassic reptiles and fishes were found. Usually these infiUings consisted of a 

 material as dense as the limestone itself, and from which the organic remains 



