386 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



to certain beds of plants which were absolutely Permian plants. Above 

 the limestone and conglomerate came a series of clays or shales asso- 

 ciated with the sandstone. They passed conformably, without any break 

 whatever, into the Upper Sandstone. He was sure Mr. Binney would sus- 

 tain all he had said in reference to this group being a great palaeozoic 

 Trias. He did not like the words Dias and Trias, because in England we 

 had no Trias ; there was no central member of the system ; the name was 

 given to that superior formation by a German geologist because the divi- 

 sion was clear in his part of his country. It was not so, however, in other 

 parts ; and no general name ought to be given from the divisions of rocks 

 happening in any one country. St. Bees' Head exhibited a small and most 

 instructive portion of the roth-todte-liegende of the Germans, or the 

 Lower Bed Sandstone of English geologists. The conglomerates which 

 were deposited unconformably on the summit, called sandstones in that 

 country, were eroded in a most irregular manner, and the breccia en- 

 tered into all the sinuosities, showing in that part a complete physical 

 break between the coal, the sandstones, and the superjacent Permian 

 rocks. This was an important point, because an eminent German geolo- 

 gist had endeavoured to class this roth-todte-liegende with the coal-depo- 

 sit. St. Bees' Head was an instance of the total separation of the carboni- 

 ferous formation and the beginning of a new series of things in these 

 breccia, gravel and sand. Immediately upon this breccia, the representa- 

 tive of the yellow sandstones, which underlie the magnesian limestone to 

 the west, comes clearly and unequivocally the magnesian limestone, filled 

 with such fossils as would be found at Sunderland and along the Hartle- 

 pool coast. There they had, then, magnesian limestone distinctly resting 

 on this lower breccia, and superposed and passing upwards, without the 

 slightest break in the argillaceous beds, into the sandstones. He would 

 say a word on a point of importance to gentlemen living in mining dis- 

 tricts. In Germany this deposit would not have been known so well had 

 there not existed under it a certain thin band called kupfer-schiefer, which, 

 though thin, was in that part of Germany explored most pertinaciously. 

 In this country the roth-todte-liegende afforded no mineral substance, and 

 we had been hitherto unacquainted with the value of a deposit to which 

 he would now call attention. It was the most important mineral deposit 

 that had ever been discovered in the north-west of England, and it was 

 enriching the people to an incredible extent. He referred to the haema- 

 tite deposits in the cavities of the mountain -limestone. It had often been 

 asked, — To what age are we to attribute this enormous infilling with this 

 haematite ironstone^? There were some who had attributed it to Tertiary 

 periods. Professor Phillips was the first who made the suggestion that it 

 was probably connected with the very series of deposits to which he now 

 called attention. He had said that at the bottom of this series was this 

 great accumulation of breccia. It was distinctly seen as forming the bot- 

 tom parts of it in many parts of Furness. The haematite had been fre- 

 quently worked out by old workmen from the cavities under the breccia. 

 This discovery enriched his Permian group, and it showed that that period 

 of the earth, so remarkable in Germany for the up-pouring of porphyry, 

 and the great change which took place in the earth's condition after the 

 formation of coal, enriched the Permian system by the formation of a de- 

 posit of the richest and most valuable mineral in the British Isles. 



Mr. Kirkby said the Permian system was as entirely connected with the mountain- 

 limestone and with the carboniferous system, as the Cambrian was with the Silurian. 



On a Fossil Salamander. By Dr. Geinitz, of Dresden. — An inter- 



