264 Address to the Lincolnshive Naturalists’ Union. 
of so wide an area now, but intend to confine my address to the 
low flat land between Gainsborough and Lincoln—a distance of 
some 15 miles,—alluding to the adjoining strata, only as they are 
necessary to explain the structure and present configuration of the 
district. 
Now, as we stand on the high ground above Gainsborough 
and look over the Trent, we are on the oldest strata in the 
County,—the Upper Keuper beds as they are called,—at the top 
of the Trias or New Red Sandstone, the highest beds in the great 
Primary Division; and if we could be carried back to the time 
when these beds were laid down, we should see, instead of the 
present country, a vast lake, or inland sea, surrounded on all 
sides by land, which extended far out into the Atlantic on the 
west, and was connected with Europe on the south, and with 
Scandinavia, over what is now the North Sea or German Ocean, 
on the east. 
This region had, for a very long period, been in a quiet, 
tranquil state ; a great contrast to the stormy Permain age which 
preceded it, when the Alleghany mountains of America and the 
Pennine Chain of Derbyshire, the back bone of England, were 
thrown up. 
This vast inland sea was a fresh water lake, which gradually 
became salt by the concentration of its waters,—like the salt 
lakes of North America,—and in which sand stones, grey and red 
marls, salt and gypsum were deposited. 
It is to this inland sea, barren as it was, that we owe the 
rock salt and brine springs of Worcestershire, Cheshire, and 
Middlesborough. While, from its deposits of gypsum, or hydrated 
sulphate of lime, we get ornamental alabaster, and plaster of 
Paris from which Parian and other cements are made. 
In the Railway cutting, leading to Lincoln, bands of blue. 
red, and grey Keuper marls are seen, each resting on the other 
They are the slow and quiet products of this great inland lake. 
and have no traces of life left in them. Suddenly, however, a 
wonderful change takes place; for, resting on the uppermost 
