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south-east side, the sea of new red lies stretched before you, which here 

 has worn away a pass, as it were, into the silurian, which on the north- 

 west and south-west sides cover an extensive area. 



From different points of the eminence on which the castle stands, 

 you have stretched at yom* feet, or reared in masses around you, four 

 great distinct and important geological formations. The new red, the 

 carboniferous, old red, and silmian — the representatives of ages so incal- 

 culable that the mind refuses, or is unable to comprehend, their im 

 mensity. Here is opened a book which records more wonderful, yet still 

 truthful, events than the most fabulous relations of Eastern allegory 

 ventured upon. North-east and south-east you view a large field of new 

 red ; it is a good type of the formation, and apart from its geological 

 teachings, a most enchanting view. Its softened features are brought 

 into immediate and striking contrast with the sharp outlines of the older 

 formations. The murmming streams, the tall poplars, and the small 

 and glassy-looking pools, here and there broken up with a miniature 

 ravine, bosky dell, or rounded elevations, form the foreground to 

 massive mountains, rent, torn, and distorted, in places divided by dark 

 gorges, out of which rush foaming torrents, bordered by the dark yew 

 and tapering fir. Away in the misty distance the dark cavernous 

 openings look so deep that imagination may well picture them the 

 entrances to a nether world. 



I have said this field of new red is a good type of the formation. 

 Survey it as it lies before you, looking upon it as a calm sea, and not a 

 solid surface ; an estuary of the great sea of the same period that 

 overflowed Cheshire, Lancashire, and the centre of England, it is here 

 bounded within your view, its natural position, by the rocks of 

 the older formation, from the debris of which it is composed. The dis- 

 turbance previous to its deposition had upheaved the rocks of its boun- 

 dary line, between which it here lies like a lake. 



Nature, as if wearied with the mighty convulsions that had rent her 

 earlier works asunder, and almost annihilated life, now appears to have 

 rested for a long period. Yet at times, dui'ing its depositions, there were 

 some few convulsive throes comparatively trifling, leaving nevertheless 

 distinct traces of their occurrence. We ascertain between the forma- 

 tions of the lower and upper series this disturbance took place, an 

 epoch defined by the disturbed surface of the lower and comparatively 

 undisturbed state of the upper. This is evidenced in our neighbour- 

 hood by the comparison of the lower formation in the Hundred of 

 Wirral, and of the upper in the sahferous deposits of Northwich and 

 the surrounding country. Better still in the Vosge* Mountains, whero 



