12 BOXXEY : ox THE ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH TRIAS. 
southwards in the later Palaeozoic and earlier Mesozoic periods, 
during which also, and for even longer, we have evidence of a 
similaT transference from a somev/hat similar region lying to 
the south-west of England. Of this great mountain region, 
as I have often pointed out, Scandinavia, the Highlands, North- 
west Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany may be fragments, the 
present 100 fathom line possibly giving some clue to the position 
of its watershed. 
If the Banter group were deposited by a river flowing north- 
ward we can only dispose of its waters by supposing them to 
have been absorbed, for an outlet in that direction would re- 
quire some startling and yet temporary changes in physical 
geography. The former fate w^ould not, I think, be in itself 
improbable. The upper and lower Bunter, with their wind- 
worn sands and widespread fragmental deposits, are very sug- 
gestive of a desert lowland, and in such regions absorption is 
always possible ; an ending which must not be forgotten even 
supposing the river to have flowed southward or south-eastward, 
for we find it rather difficult to ascertain its ultimate course 
in that direction. It may, however, have passed through a 
restricted channel on one or the other side of the Charnwood 
Hills. A southward drift of material, generally no doubt argil- 
laceous, during Jurassic times and along a channel opening 
towards North-western France is more than suggested by the 
results of borings in South-eastern England, especially by that 
at Netherfield near Battle. 
As I have been forced to dwell at considerable length on 
the Bunter sub-division, and there is a more general agreement 
about the Keuper, I shall pass rather briefly over that. The 
lower Keuper sandstones may well have been deposited under 
somewhat similar conditions to the Bunter, but which corre- 
sponded more closely with those of the Swiss Molasse. Fossils, 
as Mr. Lomas will tell you — Reptilian or Amphibian, with fish, 
annelids, a few moUusca, very imperfectly preserved, and some 
plants — are not altogether wanting in the Keuper Sandstone 
or the Waterstones,* and both, but especially the latter, with 
their footprints, ripple marks, sun cracks, and rain prints, are 
* They are not quite absent from the Red Marl. 
