73 TOWN GEOLOGY. [m. 



most ancient pedigree, who have remained all but un- 

 changed, while the whole surface of the globe has 

 changed around them more than once or twice. 



And now, of course, my readers will expect to hear 

 something of the deposits of rock-salt, for which 

 Cheshire and its red rocks are famous. I have never 

 seen them, and can only say that the salt does not, it 

 is said by geologists, lie in the sandstone, but at the 

 bottom of the red marl which caps the sandstone. It 

 was formed most probably by the gradual drying up 

 of lagoons, such as are depositing salt, it is said now, 

 both in the Gulf of Tadjara, on the Abyssinian frontier 

 opposite Aden, and in the Runn of Cutch, near the 

 Delta of the Indus. If this be so, then these New 

 Bed sandstones may be the remains of a whole Sahara 

 a sheet of sandy and all but lifeless deserts, reaching 

 from the west of England into Germany, and rising 

 slowly out of the sea ; to sink, as we shall find, beneath 

 the sea again. 



And now, as to the vast period of time the four 

 or five worlds, as I called it which elapsed between 

 the laying down of the New Red sandstones and the 

 laying down of the boulder-clays. 



I think this fact for fact it is may be better 

 proved by taking readers an imaginary railway journey 

 to London from any spot in the manufacturing districts 

 of central England begging them, meanwhile, to keep 

 their eyes open on the way. 



And here I must say that I wish folks in general 

 would keep their eyes a little more open when they 

 travel by rail. When I see young people rolling along 

 in a luxurious carriage, their eyes and their brains 

 absorbed probably in a trashy shilling novel, and never 



