On the Permian Character of some of the Red Sandstones and Breccias of the South of Scotland

Abstract

At the conclusion of the paper on the Permian beds, printed in our Manchester Memoirs this last summer, I gave the following as the greatest thicknesses of the different beds in the descending order:— feet. 1. Red and variegated marls, with gypsum in the north, and thin beds and nodules of limestone in the south of the district 300 2. Magnesian limestone, resembling the Yorkshire deposit 10 3. Conglomerate 350 4. Lower New Red Sandstone, of a soft crumbling character; some of the beds flaggy; the lower beds passing into red laminated marls at Westhouse 500 1160 Below these occur the red and variegated sandstone of Whitehaven, which at present I do not include as Permian. In my paper I state that I am convinced that the conglomerate, or rather breccia, at Craigs and in the Cleuden near Dumfries are of the same geological age as the sandstones and conglomerates of Belah, Brough, Westhouse, and Humphrey Head, and I quote Professor Harkness on the thickness of some of those deposits. Since the time you were in Manchester I have been down into the South-west of Scotland, and, after looking at the country, I have come to the conclusion that the red sandstone of Canobie on the Esk, Lockerbie, Corncockle Muir, Dumfries Thornhill, near Sanquhar, and Mauchline, as well as those of the West of Scotland generally, with the exception of the Annan beds containing tracks of the Labyrinthodon , will have to be classed as Permian, instead of Trias as they appear on most geological maps.