20 
But though I have already cut out work enough for the lifetime of many 
workers, that is not even the most important bit of stratigraphical geology 
that remains to be worked out, and for the working out of which Chester 
is the proper centre. 
Great Britain had its mountains and valleys (many of them we can shew 
were much in the same position as the mountains and valleys of to-day) 
before all these red rocks of Chester were deposited. Where was the shore- 
line? What was that old Continent like? On onesideof you, you have at 
the base the Collyhurst beds resting on coal-measures, and called Permian ; 
on the other side, the red beds of Cheshire, running up to the Clwydian 
ranges and round into the Clwyd yalley, where their character and relation 
to the carboniferous rocks are well seen. Here the lowest beds are called 
Trias. The sequence of beds is exactly the same red sandstone, with a 
little conglomerate at the base, followed by red marls, these succeeded by 
more red sandstone. In the marls in the Clwyd valley, two plants—in the 
marls at Collyhurst, a few shells. Now, between the red rocks on which 
(and in a great part of which) Chester is built, and the red rocks of Colly- 
hurst, close to Manchester, there is said to be one of the greatest breaks in 
all the geological series—greater than the break between the lower new red 
or permian and the carboniferous—greater than the break between the 
carboniferons and silurian, for it is the break between the primary and 
secondary, while those others are only between sub-divisions of the primary. 
I don’t believe it. I believe it is quite insignificant compared with these ; 
but this I will not go into now, only I would repeat that a local museum, 
to do good work and help on science at large, as well as stimulate and give 
interest to Jocal geologists, must be strong if not exhaustive in all the 
evidence bearing on local geology. Again, over the Oolitic and Devonian 
plateau—v.e., the plain of marine denudation which was formed by the sea 
which cut off the tops of the crumpled Devonian and Oolitie rocks of the 
South-west of England—the sea deposited strata referred to the Neocomian 
period—what was going on in Cheshire then? Can we trace a series of 
hills reaching up to somewhat the same level, or rising or falling steadily to 
the north of the Blackdown pre-Neocomian plain? If so, what becomes of 
that plain: Have we any evidence of what was going .on here in Miocene 
times? When we come to the period during which there is evidence that 
Britain was subjected to cold so intense as to give us massive glacier ice 
crashing down from all the highlands, and icebergs floating in all our seas, 
we have plenty of data in Cheshire; but here perhaps we get into the 
period about which there has of late been most speculation and most 
controversy. We have not agreed as to what happened, nor as to the 
causes which produced the conditions which, to us living in this genial 
climate, appear to be so exceptional. Some tell us that glacial conditions 
are chiefly determined by the secularly recurring position and place of the 
earth with regard to the sun ; others say that the geographical changes are 
so much more important that the astronomical causes may be neglected in 
comparison. Some explain the occurrence of marine shells associated with 
glacial deposits at high levels to the submergence of the land; others push 
the sand and shells up the hill-side by the advancing ice foot. To test such 
theories by reference to what you can see about your own home is the duty 
