IV. On the Copper-bearing Rocks of Alderley Edge, Cheshire

The age of the sandstones and conglomerates, containing copper and other ores, at Alderley Edge, has until lately been a matter of some uncertainty; and, as far as I am aware, no detailed account of the formation has yet been published. Some few years since I made an examination, in company with Mr. E. W. Binney, F.R.S., of the beds in question, and on the first opportunity afterwards I hazarded an opinion, at a meeting of the Geological Society of Manchester, that the copper-bearing beds were referable to the age of the Lower Keuper Sandstone of the Trias. My brother-geologists, I had reason to think, received this opinion with some amount of distrust, as the rock, being in some places a quartzose conglomerate, and in others a soft whitish or yellowish sandstone, had much more the appearance of Bunter Sandstone than of the uppermost member of the Trias. My conjecture was not made, however, at hap-hazard, but was founded on evidence of position and petrographical characters, as the conglomerates, with their underlying bands of red shale, reminded me of the basement-beds of the Keuper division in the somewhat distant region of Alton Towers, and the Churnet Valley in Staffordshire.