XVl PERMIAN FOSSILS. 
at Roker Cliff, or in the rock of “marbles” at Building Hill. In those beds which are almost entirely 
composed of crystalline carbonate of lime, as in the Bathing Cove at Byers’s Quarry, and several other 
localities, it may be supposed, that the volatilising agent has acted on the entire mass of the rock. 
I have been ledinto the foregoing observations, not so much froma desire to describe certain phenomena, 
as to give them a Paleontological bearing, which, to a certain extent, they appear to possess; because, 
from the published observations of Freiesleben! and Geinitz, it is suspected, that rocks displaying precisely 
the same characters, having the same relative position, and containing the same fossils, are developed in 
several localities in the Permian region of Thuringia. Do the rocks alluded to contain the fossils Schizodus 
Schlotheimi, Mytilus septifer, &c., to the exclusion of Palliobranchiate shells, and corals, as their equivalents 
in Durham ? 
The Permian members of the North of England do not complete the series ;? ‘as in 
the South of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, other rocks, 
occasionally consisting of variously coloured marls, with and without gypsum, exist, 
which are supposed to be more recent than the former, and which become obscured 
by seemingly being intermixed with, or apparently passing into, the Sandstones, and 
Saliferous marls of the overlying Triassic system. As much obscurity hangs over the 
Permian rocks of the Midland districts, it will be the safest plan to make no other than 
a mere incidental mention of them; and the same may be advantageously adopted with 
regard to the Derbyshire Magnesian Limestone containing Productus horridus, the Bristol 
Magnesian Conglomerate, and the so-called Permian rocks in South Wales, and some 
other deposits, supposed to be of the same age, in the neighbourhood of Dungannon 
and Belfast, Ireland. Certain members of the Permian system undoubtedly occur in 
Cumberland.* 
in the Tyrolian Dolomites, the reader is referred to the hypothesis of Von Buch, and to some others lately 
proposed by Haidinger, Professor Favre, and Von Morlot, translations of which are given in the ‘New 
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal’ for January and July, 1849. 
1 Geognostischer Beitrig zur Kenntniss des Kupfer-schiefergebirges, vol. iv. 
2 T am inclined to think, that the remains of a higher member of the Permian system occur in the 
County of Durham; as during the excavation of the Newcastle and Sunderland railway, at a place between 
Fulwell toll-gate, and Monkwearmouth, the workmen exposed several large natural galleries passing through 
beds of marly limestone belonging to member a, and filled with a very fine pipe clay of various colours, as 
red, blue, yellow, and green. It occurs to me, that Professor Phillips (? Philosophical Magazine, 1828) has 
described something of the kind in the limestone quarries at Brotherton. I was prevented making any 
proper observations on these galleries in consequence of the workmen sodding the sides of the excavation 
shortly after it was made. 
3 The account herein given of the Permian members of the North of England has been derived from my 
own observations made some years since, assisted by Professor Sedgwick’s Memoir, and another valuable 
paper, entitled ‘ Notes on the New Red Sandstone of the County of Durham below the Magnesian Limestone,’ 
by Mr. William Hutton, and inserted in the ‘Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, 
Durham, and Newcastle-on-Tyne,’ vol. i, pp. 66-74. In some respects I differ from Professor Sedgwick, 
particularly as regards the origin of the crystalline structures, and the relative position of some of the beds ; 
for example, those between Marsden and North Point on the coast of Durham, and the Fish bed in Pallion 
Quarry. My removal to Galway has prevented the latter point bemg further examined into, which was always 
my intention previously to finishing the present work: I cannot, therefore, maintain my views so strongly 
as could be desired: perhaps, were I going over the ground again, I might’be led to modify them to a 
certain extent. 
