56 



REPORT — 1842. 



width, yet extending continuously in nearly an east and west direction for many 

 miles : I have traced it from Hebden Bridge, near Halifax, to Wakefield, a distance 

 of upwards of twenty miles, and I have no doubt that it extends further east till it 

 unites with the great mass of drift which occupies the vale of York." 



The author supposes that at the period when the drift was deposited, the eleva- 

 tion of the land was much lower, which would cause the level parts of the country 

 to be submerged, and the narrow dales of Yorkshire would be sea-locks, like those 

 now existing in Scotland, along which icebergs detached from the glaciers of the 

 Cumbrian mountains would be floated in every direction. 



Notice of the Fossil Footsteps in the New Red Sandstone Quarry at Lymm, 

 in C/ieshire. By Mr. Hawks haw. 

 The Lymm quarry is at a short distance from Lymm on its eastern side, and south of 

 the turnpike road from that place to Altrincham. The general dip of the strata is 

 S.S.W. at an inclination of three inches to the yard. The quarry is near the out- 

 crop of the stratified beds that are worked therein. The nature of these beds will 

 be understood by the measurement of their vertical section as exposed in the quarry, 

 which is as follows : — 



soil. 



sand coloured with red oxide of iron. 



gray marl slightly stratified at bottom, passing into a thin stratum 



of shale in other parts of the quarry, 

 arenaceous shale in lamina? of £th inch to 1 inch in thickness, 

 arenaceous shale, harder than the overlying stratum, 

 gray sandstone, 

 gray shale, 

 gray sandstone, 

 shale. 



gray and red sandstone, 

 shale. 



gray and red sandstone, 

 shale. 



gray and red sandstone, redder than the upper beds, 

 shale. 



red sandstone, 

 shale. 



red sandstone, 

 shale, 

 red sandstone. 



floor of quarry. 



The rock underlying these strata is in thick beds or large homogeneous masses, 

 either altogether or very indistinctly stratified. Most probably it was rapidly depo- 

 sited from deep water, containing vast quantities of sand in admixture, and the whole 

 deeply impregnated with oxide of iron. 



The strata of the quarry have evidently been formed under other circumstances. 

 The thinness and regularity of the layers, varying both in texture and colour, some- 

 times thin shale, sometimes stone, together with their position and outcrop, would 

 seem to bespeak an ancient shore that had still and quiet waters, but which, never- 

 theless, were not uniform with respect to the matter they contained in admixture, 

 but left a deposit frequently varying in the space of a few inches. 



The thin strata of shale are of a yellowish gray colour. The laminae of the upper 

 and thick beds of shale have a black coating, probably carbonaceous, as though the 

 waters from which these upper beds were formed had come more into contact with 



