Ordinary Meeting, February 8th, 1859. 
W. Fairbairn, F.R.S., &c.. President, in the Chair. 
Mr. E. W. Binney, F.R.S., &c., communicated a Notice 
of the Lias Deposits at Quarry Gill and other places near 
Carlisle. — On the western side of the Pennine chain, after 
passing the small isolated patch of lias at Audlem, in 
Cheshire, none of the secondary rocks, superior to the trias, 
have been met with in the counties of Lancaster and Cum- 
berland, therefore the discovery of a tract of lias near 
Carlisle is of considerable interest. 
For some years past Mr. R. C. Brockbank, of the firm of 
Messrs. Carr and Co., of Carlisle, has been diligently 
engaged in searching for coal, and has investigated the 
country around Carlisle with considerable care. His attention 
was chiefly directed to the district lying between Curthwaite, 
on. the Carlisle and Maryport Railway and the Solway, 
especially about Aikton and Oughterby, points which Pro- 
fessor Sedgwick had thought likely places for boring for 
coal, and where that eminent geologist had been informed a 
coal of sixteen inches in thickness had been actually found.* 
The first place where Mr. Brockbank found the blue 
metals, which had always been supj)osed to be coal measures, 
was in the brook course at Thornby. In examining them he 
found a shell resembling an ammonite, and some other fossils, 
which induced him to think that the beds might possibly be 
lias. On his sending the specimens to me, through Mr. 
Brockbank, engineer, of Manchester, I immediately pro- 
nounced them to be lias. 
On the 13th of January last, being at Carlisle, Mr. Brock- 
bank was so kind as to drive me over the district. We first 
♦ See Professor Sedgwick’s Paper on the basin of the Eden and the north- 
western coasts of Cumberland, Vol. IV., New Series, of the Transactions of the 
Geological Society of London, p. 393. 
Peocetsdinos — Lit. & Phii.. Society — No. 10.— Session, 1858-9. 
