02 



Each subdivision is again made up of several layers or 

 strata, with seams of clay, of variable thickness, occasionally 

 intervening between. 



The whole of the strata will be found, upon examination, 

 to have been acted on by powerful subterranean forces, 

 situated at great depths from the surface, which have 

 upraised and tilted them at various angles, and thereby have 

 produced permanent lines of fracture and dislocation which 

 penetrate the entire series. These lines may be divided into 

 primary, and secondary or subordinate. 



The primary run all nearly magnetic North and South, 

 and the secondary approximately at right angles to the 

 primary, and, therefore, North of East and South of West ; 

 consequently, the whole district is broken up into a sort of 

 net-work of fractures and dislocations, which, I may observe, 

 is not confined to this district only, but in the whole Eastern 

 part of Lancashire and the Western part of Cheshire, in the 

 eoal measures at Little Neston, Bagillt, See., on the West 

 side of the Dee, in Wales, the lines of fracture take 

 precisely the same courses of direction. 



This general similarity of conformation in the descending 

 scale of the series of the formations that occupy so extensive 

 an area, must be referred to a force that acted simulta- 

 neously over the whole mass, and of a power so pro- 

 digious as to set all human calculation, or even conception, 

 at defiance. 



By the breaking and elevating of the strata from 

 their horizontal position — in which they were, no doubt, 

 originally deposited — their continuity has been lost, and the 

 differences of elevation and depression of corresponding 

 strata, on the two sides of a line of fracture, frequently 

 amount to several hundred feet, the greatest height being 

 always on the East side of the primary, or North and 

 South lines. 



In the bed of the Mersey, for example, the down-throw 



