Bases for permutation groups and matroids

In this paper, we give two equivalent conditions for the irredundant bases of a permutation group to be the bases of a matroid. (These are deduced from a more general result for families of sets.) If they hold, then the group acts geometrically on the matroid, in the sense that the fixed points of any element form a flat. Some partial results towards a classification of such permutation groups are given. Further, if G acts geometrically on a perfect matroid design, there is a formula for the number of G-orbits on bases in terms of the cardinalities of flats and the numbers of G-orbits on tuples. This reduces, in a particular case, to the inversion formula for Stirling numbers.