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DEEP BORING IN THE NEW RED MARLS NEAR BIRMINGHAM. 313 
ON A DEEP BORING IN THE NEW RED MARLS 
(KEUPER MARLS) NEAR BIRMINGHAM. 
BY W. JEROME HARRISON, F.G.S. 
Tlie Triassic strata which form the country surrounding 
Birmingham consist of the usual divisions of sandstone and 
marl; the sandstones predominating below, the marls above. 
In the immediate neighbourhood of the town, the sandy beds 
are divided from the marly or clayey strata by a dislocation 
or line of fault which runs from north-east to south-west, 
taking a line from Erdington to Rubery, and traceable 
altogether for a distance of about twenty miles. The fault 
runs through the town of Birmingham nearly parallel to the 
River Rea, and from a quarter to lialf-a-mile west of the 
present bed of the river. The Lower Keuper sandstone, 
which forms a surface band one to two miles in width on the 
west of this fault, is a porous stratum about 200 feet in 
thickness. It is underlain by the Bunter Pebble Beds, 300 
to 400 feet in thickness, which crop out further to the west, 
and which contain an inexhaustible supply of water. From 
three deep wells in the suburbs of Birmingham—two on the 
north at Perry and Witton, and one on the south near Selly 
Oak—the Corporation Waterworks obtain daily a supply of 
over eight million gallons of water, most of which comes 
from the Pebble Beds, which occupy the lower portion of 
each well or bore-hole. The water is of good quality, showing 
from nine to fifteen degrees ot hardness. 
On the east of the line of fault a very different state of 
things prevails. The rocks on this side have been dropped 
vertically some six or seven hundred feet. Here the surface 
is composed of the Keuper Red Marls, which form a broad 
band ten or twelve miles in width, extending from Birmingham 
to Shustoke. The water-supply of this tract—which has a 
considerable extension to north and south from Tamworth to 
Warwick and Redditcli—is wholly derived from superficial 
sources, such wells as exist drawing their water from the 
post-glacial sands and gravels which lie here and there in 
hummocks on the Red Marls. 
As the population on this agricultural plain of Warwick¬ 
shire is comparatively small and scattered, and as there are 
no manufacturing towns in the district, it is, perhaps, not 
surprising that until quite recently no attempts have been 
made to reach the buried waters which probably exist in the 
Bunter and Keuper Sandstones that underlie the Red Marls 
