56 NOTES ON A SALT-MARSH AT BRANSTON, 
deposited ages ago from an inland sea, which extended probably 
across Staffordshire and Cheshire, and had one of its shores at 
Brizlincote. As a result of its deposition from salt water, it is 
found that a thin saliniferous layer occasionally occurs amongst 
the others, and it is to the outcrop of one of these that the 
brackish springs at Branston are due. 
This is, we think, a more probable explanation than that the 
springs arise at Dunstall and flow across the Branston meadows to 
the river, for the most saline water we have analysed is unmistak- 
ably derived from springs. Such springs occur at several other 
places on the new Red formation, e.g., at Weston, Shirleywich, 
Ingestre, and Tixall, at the two former of which salt is being 
extensively manufactured. 
The saline waters at Branston would no doubt be much more 
concentrated were it not that in passing from the limit of the 
saliniferous stratum to the surface they suffer dilution by the water 
in the overlying gravel. The sinking of a tube in the vicinity of 
Ditch No. III would no doubt yield a strongly saline water, and we 
hope at some future time to lay before the Society the results of 
such a boring. 
Though we have not demonstrated the possibility, as one or 
two sanguine friends were ready to imagine, of increasing the 
resources of the town by adding the manufacture of salt to its 
present one of beer, we venture to think our paper may not be 
without value in delimiting the area of the Branston Salt-Marsh ; 
and, secondly, in showing the relationship between the saline con- 
stituents of a water and the plants which will inhabit it. 
Our investigations have also brought to light one or two 
interesting facts relating to the appearance and disappearance of 
plants in a certain locality. As before stated, in the autumn of 
1888 Rumex maritinus occurred freely in a ditch beside the 
osier bed next the village of Branston, but in 1889 it had 
disappeared entirely, and is still absent (Oct., 1891). The author 
of the ‘‘ Geology and Mineral Waters of Burton ” put forward the 
query as to whether these maritime plants have continued to 
exist where they now grow ever since the tidal waves reached as 
