TOWN GEOLOGY. 



PREFACE. 



THIS little book, including the greater part of this 

 Preface, has shaped itself out of lectures given to the 

 young men of the city of Chester. But it does not 

 deal, in its present form, with the geology of the 

 neighbourhood of Chester only. I have tried so to 

 recast it, that any townsman, at least in the manu- 

 facturing districts of England and Scotland, may learn 

 from it to judge, roughly perhaps, but on the whole 

 accurately, of the rocks and soils of his own neighbour- 

 hood. He will find, it is true, in these pages, little or 

 nothing about those " Old Red Sandstones/' so 

 interesting to a Scotchman ; and he will have to bear 

 in mind, if he belong to the coal districts of Scotland, 

 that the " stones in the wall'* there belong to much older 

 rocks than those " New Red Sandstones " of which this 

 book treats ; and that the coal measures of Scotland, 

 with the volcanic rocks which have disturbed them, 

 are often very different in appearance to the English 

 coal measures. But he will soon learn to distinguish. 



