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district iying between the Manchester coalfield and that of 
Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham, while to the south of 
Manchester, under the Trias, it is replaced by the conglo- 
merate of increased thickness. The former rock has pro- 
bably never been deposited, nevertheless the fact of its 
general absence is of great importance to all parties who 
may sink for coal under the Trias. 
At the present time the Permian strata of the N.W. of 
England and the S.W. of Scotland, so far as my knowledge 
extends, are represented in Lancashire in the following 
descending order : — 
1. Upper Permian sandstone of Moat, Shawk, St. Bees, 
and Furness Abbey ; absent in South Lancashire, without 
there is a representative of it in the Knowsley Quarry, 
near Prescot. 
2. Magnesian marls with limestones and gypsum, con- 
taining Bchizodus ohscurus, Gervillia antiqua, and other 
characteristic fossils, 
3. Conglomerate. 
4. Permian sandstone of Yauxhall, Manchester. 
5. Lower Permian sandstone of Whitehaven and Astley, 
by many English geologists taken to be uncomformable 
coal measures, but in Germany termed Lower Rothliegende, 
The old Magnesian Limestone formation, as described by 
Professors Sedgwick and King, and my friend Mr. J. W. 
Kirkby, in the East and N.E. of England under the four 
first-named divisions, was pretty plain, although the line of 
demarcation between the Brotherton limestone and the 
Trias was not so easy to make out in all places. In the 
N.W. of England, and adjoining Scotland, the St. Bees 
sandstone, a rock of about 1,000 feet in thickness, cannot 
be traced distinctly passing upwards into the Trias, although 
doubtless it does somewhere betwixt Carlisle and the 
Solway ; but in the valley of the Irk at Manchester the 
beds Nos. 4, 3, and 2 are seen lying on each other appa- 
