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railway station, thence it dips eastward at a very small angle, 
and forms the greater portion of the vale of York. It is 
commonly a fine grained red sandstone; though sometimes 
it is of a yellowish- white colour, as at Eainton. As a building 
stone it is somewhat perishable. It is entirely devoid of 
fossils, but contains beds of gypsum, about a mile and a half 
to the north of Ripon, on the west side of the river Ure. 
These consist of layers of grey and white gypsum, alternating 
with seams of red sandy clay, and are remarkable on account 
of their contorted stratification. Here and there the gypsum 
is of a pale green tint, which is perhaps due to the presence 
of a small amount of copper. 
The Magnesian Limestone lies below the new red sandstone, 
and rises towards the west at a gentle angle, forming a 
series of low hills running in a south-easterly direction. 
The general thickness of this formation is about 250 or 
300 feet. There are many quarries and out-crops in the 
neighbourhood of Ripon, from which a very good idea of 
the formation may be gained. The greater portion 
consists of soft porous limestone of a pale yellow tint, with 
occasional beds of hard blue limestone, as at Quarry 
Moor and Wormald Green. In an old quarry in Whitclifie 
Lane there is a bed, which exhibits an oolitic structure. At 
Wormald Green one of the thin clay partings between the 
beds is strongly impressed with ripple markings. In another 
quarry near, and somewhat lower in the formation, there is 
a bed of about the thickness of a foot, consisting of broken 
fragments of limestone, mixed with marl, above and below 
which the beds are hard and compact. This seems to indi- 
cate a temporary elevation of the floor of the Permian sea, 
bringing the deposit within the influence of the waves by 
which it was broken up into fragments and re-deposited. 
The ripple markings and oolitic structure indicate also that 
the deposit was not made in deep water, but that the sea 
