Permian Beds Research Articles

Notes on some Lamellibranchiate Mollusca obtained by Mr. Molyneux from the Sengwe Coalfield

Four small slabs of sandstone obtained by Mr. Molyneux are covered with imperfectly-preserved bivalve shells, which seem to represent two species. Three of these slabs, numbered 7, exhibit numerous specimens of a small oval shell, the largest measuring about 9 millimetres in antero-posterior length. Some examples show the surface-markings or casts left by an impression of the surface, while a few bear traces of the anterior adductor muscle-scar. They all have a markedly Unioniform aspect; but none appear to exhibit the hinge-plate, which is a very important factor in determining the genus to which they belong. Prof. Amalitsky has shown that in the Permian beds of the Oka-Volga Basin there occur several genera of Unioniform shells, for the generic determination of which the hinge-characters are essential. The same author has studied the collection of lamellibranchs from the Karoo Formation of South Africa in the possession of the Geological Society, and has recognized several species identical with those from the Permian near Nizhni Novgorod. I have had the privilege of examining Prof. Amalitsky's type-specimens in St. Petersburg, and, in his company, the beds in which they were discovered near Nizhni Novgorod. I have also studied the Bain Collections from South Africa, in the Geological Society's Museum, used by Sharpe. On the whole, my biological results agree with those of Prof. Amalitsky, and I only differ from him on mere questions of nomenclature. I think that the small oval gibbose bivalves discovered by Mr. Molyneux in the Sengwe Coalfield should most probably

The Whitehaven Sandstone Series

The Whitehaven Sandstone, with its associated shales, is a purple-grey deposit sometimes having a thickness of 500 or 600 feet. The Author gives details of a large number of sections of the series, which also contains thin coal-seams and occasionally Spirorbis -limestone. He combats the view that it is stained Middle Coal Measure deposit, and gives his reasons for believing that it rests unconformably upon the Middle Coal Measures, and also that it has not received its colour by abstraction of colouring-matter from the Permian beds, but that the colour actually belongs to the deposit. He describes sections which lead him to suppose that the deposit has a wider distribution over the Cumbrian district than is allowed by previous writers.

On some singular nodules in the Magnesian Limestone

In the quarry of Magnesian Limestone near Wormald Green there occur some singular nodules of an impure silicate of lime, which appear to be of sufficient interest to be worth putting on record. They seem to form a connecting link between the Permian beds of Yorkshire and those of Durham. I am informed by Mr. R. Howse, of Newcastle, that simular nodules are found at South Shields, and at Fulwell, near Sunderland, an analysis and description of which appeared in the Transactions of the Tyneside Naturalists’ Field Club, by Mr. Robert Calvert Clapham, and read Dec. 23, 1861,* The following is a copy of the analysis of the nodules from the Trow Rocks: — | Silica | … | … | .. | 78.00 | || | Alumina | … | … | .. | 1.50 | | Peroxide of Iron | | … | … | — | | Carb. Magnesia | | … | … | 9.20 | | ,, Lime | | … | … | 11.10 | | | | | | | | | | Total… | … | 99.80 | Upon this he remarks “It is therefore not a flint (properly so called), but a mineral consisting of silica, and carbonate of lime and magnesia, which may yet require to be named. It is possible that it may have existed as some organic substance, of which the present mineral may retain some of the original form. “Another specimen of a similar substance, but much more flinty in its appearance, found at Fulwell, and sent me by Mr. J. W. Kirkby, approaches much more nearly to the composition of flint in the quantity of silica, but contains a greater percentage of other matters than that mineral. It is composed as ...

Fossil Plants from the Wichita or Permian Beds of Texas

In the spring of the present year, Mr. E. T. Durable, state geologist of Texas, sent me for examination a small collection of fossil plants from the Wichita beds of that state. These plants were discovered and collected by Mr. W. F. Cummins, assistant on the Texas survey. They occur in the Wichita beds along with invertebrate remains which Dr. C. A. White has assigned to a Permain age, and vertebrate remains which Professor Cope asserts are of the same age. I was therefore quite anxious to know what answer the plants might give to the question of supposed geological equivalency between the Wichita series of deposits and those at the summit of the Carboniferous column in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia and in southern Ohio, where the invertebrate and reptilian remains are absent, or at least not yet discovered, though plant remains are abundant. These West Virginia beds above . . .

On a Permian Conglomerate Bed at Markington

There is in the parish of Markington a small bed of Permian Conglomerate, the existence of which seems to be worth recording. It consists of waterworn pebbles of Carboniferous Limestone arid Sandstone, with angular fragments of Magnesian Limestone, embedded in a matrix of harder Magnesian Limestone. The thickness of this bed, where it is exposed, is about a yard, and its width a few yards, as far as it is traceable. The difficulty of tracing it further arises from its position. It occurs a little below the top of a steep bank about 50 feet in height, overgrown with a rather dense plantation, in which two out-crops appear. This conglomerate bed and another well-marked bed, upon which it lies, reaches to the bottom of the valley; and upon its eroded surface there runs the Markington Beck, a great part of which shortly disappears in swallow-holes and crevices of the Limestone. After passing underneath the hili, which is between Markington and Bishop Monkton, the stream bursts out in the latter parish. That this conglomerate bed once extended further to the west is clear from the occurrence there of boulders of this rock among the other boulders of the drift. There is clear evidence at hand that the loss by denudation has been very great, probably to the extent of 200 feet or more. The well-marked limestone I have mentioned is easily recognized amongst the other Permian beds, and consists of smoothed lumpy blocks of greyish-brown limestone, containing many sparry cavities, and ...

Geology in Russia1

THE Geological Committee of St. Petersburg has made an important contribution to Russian geology by bringing out a new sheet of the Geological Map of Russia, covering the Southern Urals.2 A volume of explanatory text accompanies the map. It appears from the recent explorations of the members of the Committee that, contrary to the current opinion as to the Southern Urals consisting of a number of chains radiating from Mount Yurma, the great chain consists in its southern parts of a number of chains parallel to-one another, and all running from the south-west to the north-east. The main water-parting is built up of granites, syenites, and gneisses, considerably worn down by denuding forces; it has a steep slope towards the east, where its base disappears beneath the Tertiary deposits, while towards the west it is overlain by thick beds of Devonian, Permian, and Carboniferous deposits, and these strata are so folded as to make several parallel chains rising more than 3300 feet above the sea, and containing the highest summits of the region. Further west the country assumes the character of a plateau which is built up of nearly horizontal strata of the formation—so characteristic of the Urals— which has a fauna intermediate between the Permian and Carboniferous of Western Europe. Above this there are Triassic deposits.

On the Clayton Gill Beds

Immediately underlying the Plumpton grit, there occurs a bed of highly fossiliferous rocks, traceable from the western boundary of the Permian beds to the flanks of Great Whernside; and from the banks of the Laver near Ripon, to Follifoot, South of Harrogate, In the maps of the Geological Survey it is called the shell-bed, bat unfortunately it has no special colour whereby it might be traced. In his memoir of the Harrogate district, Mr. C. Fox-Strangways, adopted the term Cayton Gill Beds, which had been suggested to him, in consequence of an excellent section occurring in the little valley called Cayton Gill, about three miles North-West of Ripley. Here the beds dip 20° south under the Plumpton rocks, and rest conformably upon a bed of very dark shale, slightly fossiliferous, on the east side of the hill, but half-a-mile to the west, on the other side of the hill, abounding in Poseidonomya becheri, a small orthoceras, some fishes’ teeth and scales, and vegetable remains. The upper parts of the Cayton Gill beds are much softer and arenaceous than the lower, which are very hard, and in many places are quarried for road material, as at Hampsthwaite, Follifoot, Darley, and near Fountains. The occurrence of these fossiliferous beds in the middle of the millstone grit series, commonly so wanting in organic remains, seems to me to possess a certain value as a horizon in the midst of a district very greatly disturbed by faults, which are concealed by pasture and arable ...

The Batrachia of the Permian Beds of Bohemia

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Thamniscus : Permian, Carboniferous, and Silurian

The genus Thamniscus was founded in 1849 by Prof. King for a Polyzoan of large size found in the Permian beds of the north of England. The main interest of the genus consisted in Prof. King claiming for the type species the possession of certain “denticles,” “vesicles,” and “hemispherical bodies” similar to those observed in “certain Lunulites and Cellaria salicornia ”. Prof. King further institutes comparisons between these peculiarities in his genus and some of the recent forms of Polyzoa formerly included among Elasmopora, Escharina , and Cellepora . It is needless to say that these features at once assign the genus to the order of Chilostomatous Polyzoa; and as such it is entitled to rank as the most pronounced type of its class found among the Palæozoic Polyzoa. How far these characters can be sustained will be the subject of after inquiry. The next reference to the genus that I find is in 1874, when Mr. R. Etheridge, Jun., described, as found in some Scottish Carboniferous Limestone shale, a fragment of a Polyzoan which he thought might be a new species of Polypora , at the same time remarking that the disposition of the cells and the mode of branching were exceedingly like those seen in the type species of Thamniscus ( T. dubius , King), and suggesting that it might be a species of that genus.

On Abnormal Geological Deposits in the Bristol District

In making excavations at Redland, on the edge of Durdham Down, about 45 years ago, some conglomerates, associated with Carboniferous Limestone, were opened up, which contained the teeth and scattered and broken bones of reptilia, described by Messrs. Riley and Stuchbury in the ‘Proceedings of the Geological Society’ for 1836 under the names of Thecodontosaurus and Palæosaurus . As they were then the oldest known reptilia and of a high order, much interest has always attached to them. A few years since, in drainage-works at the same spot, this conglomerate was again crossed, and some other bones added to the series deposited in the Museum of the Bristol Philosophical Society. The collection has since been reviewed and described by Professor Huxley, F.R.S., and an account of the physical characters of the district given by Mr. Etheridge, F.R.S. Much uncertainty has prevailed as to the geological age of the Durdham-Down conglomerate. At first it was supposed to be Permian; but we have as yet no conclusive evidence of true Permian beds in the West of England. Mr. Etheridge has placed it on the horizon of the Dolomitic Conglomerate of the Keuper; whilst, owing to the discovery by myself of the same genera of reptilia, under somewhat similar physical conditions, in the Rhætic deposits of Holwell, and since then of true Rhætic remains on Clifton Down, I had referred them to the latter age—a point to be reviewed below. In my paper on the abnormal conditions presented in the Frome district I especially

On a new Theriodont Reptile ( Cliorhizodon orenburgesnis , Twelvetr.) from the Upper Permian Cupriferous Sandstones of Kargalinsk, near Orenburg in South-eastern Russia

T he fossil to be described in this paper was found, in the summer of 1879, in the copper-mine of Roshdestvensk, about thirty miles N. of the town of Orenberg. The mine forms one of several groups known collectively as the mines of Kargalinsk. The steppe in which it is situate is composed of Upper Permian beds of marl and sandstones resting upon limestone containing Zechstein fossils. Copper-mines in this steppe have been worked from time immemorial. Organic remains are only found in the runs of copper-ore and are everywhere absent from the bare sandstones. I have resided several years in the neighbourhood and am acquainted only with the following:— Calamites Lepidodendron. Leaves of Aroides crassispatha , Kutorga. Conifer trunks and twigs Unio , sp., allied to U. umbonatus , Fischer. Amblypterus , sp. Platysomus , sp. Remains of Labyrinthodonts. Remains of Saurians undetermined, including Rhopalodon , Fischer, and Deuterosaurus , Eichwald. Description. The fragment under consideration is a portion of a reptilian jaw, apparently comprising parts of the maxillary and premaxillary bones. When it first came into my possession it only presented to view vertical sections of the roots of the canine and molars split down longitudinally. Experimental chiselling disclosed the fine canine crown ( c ), besides the crown of an incisor ( i ) and crowns of two of the molars ( m 5 & 6). The form and implantation of the rooots had already led me to the conclusion that the animal belonged to the Theriodont order; and this inference was confirmed by the appearance of the canine

Scientific Serials

Geological Magazine, September.—This number contams four original articles:—(1) The grouping of the Permian and Triassic rocks, by H. B. Woodward, F.G.S. The object is to show that the supposed break between the subdivisions of the Triassic rocks in England rests on unsatisfactory evidence; that in the Permian beds there are evidences of unconformity; and that probably future researches will lead to the resumption of the term “Poikilitic”to embrace both the Permian and Trias.—(2) On the Pleistocene deposits yielding Mammalian remains in the vicinity of Ilford, Essex, by Messrs. Woodward and Davis. This article consists partly of references to previous numbers of the magazine, the chief feature of interest in it being a letter by Mr. Searles Wood. He formerly believed the Ilford brick earths were older than the main s̀heet of the Thames gravel; a view which he now corrects.—(3) On the remains of Rhinoceros leptorhinus, Owen, from the Pleistocene of Ilford, by the editor. This is a reprint of Mr. Davis's description of the skull, as given in Sir Antonio Brady's catalogue (privately printed), together with an extract from Dr. Falconer's palæontological memoirs.— (4) On West Indian Tertiary Fossils, by R. J. Lechmere Guppy; a first instalment of descriptions which are to be continued.— Mr. J. W. Barkas, in a letter, announces that he has found a jaw of Amphicentrum, in sub-carboniferous limestone near Richmond, and suggests that it must have lived both in fresh and salt waters, like some modern fishes.

On the Permian Breccias and Boulder-beds of Armagh

The strata of Permian age hitherto recognized in the north of Ireland have been referred, doubtless correctly, by the authors who have described them, to the upper division of that formation, or the Magnesian-Limestone series ( Zechstein ). The localities where these beds occur are three in number, Cultra on the south side of Belfast Lough, Tullyconnell Hill near Artrea, and Templereagh in Co. Tyrone. The strata are for the most part dolomitic; and the fossils they contain are representative of the Magnesian Limestones of the north of England, or of Lancashire. The beds which I have now to bring before the notice of the Society are considered to be referable, both on stratigraphical and physical grounds, to that Lower Permian series represented by the breccias of Worcestershire and Salop, and by the “brockram” of Cumberland, considered by Professor Ramsay to be an “old Boulder-clay” of Permian age. In this view I entirely concur, and I may add that the Permian beds of Armagh are not less truly a boulder-formation than those in the English localities above named. The Permian breccias of Armagh must have been frequently seen by observers, as they are well displayed in quarries; but their true significance has been strangely overlooked. My attention was first called to them in March 1872, by F. Egan, the Officer of the Geological Survey on duty in that district; and I was immediately struck by their resemblance to my old friends in Worcestershire and Shropshire, especially the beds at Enville and Alberbury.

Scientific Serials

THE Geological Magazines, Nos. 97–99 (July to September 1872).—One of the most important contributions contained in these three numbers is a translation of Prof. Nordenskiöld's account of his expedition to Greenland, which runs through the whole of them, and is not yet completed. With a good deal of general matter, this paper includes a vast amount of interesting geological information, and it must be welcome to English geologists, few of whom could make much out of it in its original Swedish dress. This translation is illustrated with the original plates, maps, and woodcuts.—Another highly important memoir, which appears in two parts in the July and August numbers, is Dr. H. B. Holl's essay on those most puzzling objects, the fossil sponges.—In the August number Prof. Allman gives us a note on a fossil Hydractinia from the Coralline Crag, the Cellepora echinata of Michelin.—Mr. S. V. Wood, jun., has some further remarks on Mr. Geikie's correlation of the glacial deposits; and Mr. J. Lucas a paper on the Permian Beds in Yorkshire, one portion of which calls forth a note by Mr. J. Clifton Ward, on rock-staining, in the September number.—The latter further contains a notice of the occurrence of the genus Cupressocrinus in the English Devonian, near King's Teignton, the first part of a paper, by Mr. Alfred Tylor, on the formation of Deltas, and some other papers, among which we may mention especially Mr. Woodward's description of a new species of Phalangiiform Arachnide (Architarbus subovalis) from the Lancashire Coal Measures, which is especially interesting from its generic identity with a North American form.

III.—On Rock-Staining

In a paper on “The Permian Beds of Yorkshire”, Mr. Lucas maintains: 1st, that the present western edge of the Magnesian Limestone, at all events to the north of Ripon, marks the old shoreline; 2nd, that the iron and other salts found in Permian deposits were derived from the neighbouring grit and limestone land; 3rd, that the colouring-matter, as it was brought down, stained the rocks forming the bed of the inland sea, and hence the purple and red colour of the grit and other beds between Knaresborough and Leeds.

II.—On the Method of Formation of the Permian Beds of South Yorkshire

Professor Ramsay in a recent paper put forward the notion that the Magnesian Limestone and its associated beds of the north-east of England were formed, in part at least, by chemical precipitation in an inland sea. Given such a sea, without outlet, and with streams flowing into it holding in solution the necessary salts (bicarbonate of lime and sulphate of magnesia would answer the purpose), it is clear that by continued evaporation a state of saturation would at length be brought about, and precipitation would take place, and Dr. Sterry Hunt has shown that dolomite and gypsum would be the probable products.

On the extension of the coal-fields of England under the more recent Permian and Triassic Formations

On the extension of the coal-fields of England under the more recent Permian and Triassic Formations

On the Sinking at Shireoak Colliery, Worksop, to the “Top Hard Coal” or “Barnsley Coal”

As the sinking at Shireoak to the “Top Hard or Barnsley Coal” is not only in a new district, but has also been carried through a considerable thickness of Permian rocks and Coal-measures which have not been proved elsewhere, we venture to think that our sections and some account of the strata passed through will be of interest to this Society. In March 1854 Mr. Lancaster commenced sinking two pits for the Duke of Newcastle on the north-western side of his Worksop Manor Estate, where the Coal-measures are overlaid by a considerable thickness of Permian rocks. A bore-hole had been sunk some years previously on the same estate by Mr. John Woodhouse, to prove the minerals; and, though it was carried to a depth of more than 300 yards, no satisfactory results were obtained, no workable coal or ironstone being found. The Permian beds are, we think, better developed here than at any colliery where they have been sunk through, though their total thickness is only 207 feet. The upper beds, as will be seen from the vertical section (p. 143), consist of thin and alternate layers of soft sandstones and red marls, which attain a total thickness of 60 feet. The Magnesian Limestone, however, forms the thicker portion. We found it divided into two principal beds; the Yellow, which was very hard and crystalline, 54 feet thick; and the Blue below it, containing bands of blue shale, 20 feet thick. Both together yielded 66 gallons of water a minute

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

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.

Section and Analysis of Permian Beds at Astley, Lancashire

The Permian beds, of which the Analysis and Section are here given, are situated in the estate of Colonel Ross, in Astley, by the eastern edge of the Township of Bedford, in the Parish of Leigh, in South Lancashire. These beds were formerly worked very extensively as a hydraulic lime at the place where these borings were taken, and for this purpose they are still worked in the neighbourhood. A general description of these beds, as existing in South Lancashire, is given by Mr. Binney in the ‘Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society,’ vol. i. pages 43 to 46 and 54 to 56, and also in his paper “On the relation of the New Red Sandstone to the Carboniferous Strata in Lancashire and Cheshire,” in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. ii. pages 22 and 23. The fossil remains here found are the same as those described in the first-mentioned paper, at pages 54 to 56, and consist of the Axinus, Avicula , and other Magnesian Limestone fossils. The “Four-foot Coal,” the highest coal worked in this district, and the highest workable coal of the middle division of the Lancashire coalfield, is worked under the places where the following bore-holes were made. The bore-hole, marked B in the following sections, is situated about 600 yards to the west fo a coal-shaft, being nearly on the strike of the measures from the shaft. In this shaft, as I am informed by Mr. Darlington, the Coal-Lessee, the thickness of the shales