Lymm. 83 



Geologists have an attraction at Lymm in the quarries 

 a little way above the church, and distant from the 

 station about two miles, for here, every now and then, 

 are uncovered the footprints of the extinct reptile ori- 

 ginally called Cheirothe'rium, and now Labyrin'thodon. 

 Just as certain plants often indicate the soil beneath 

 witness the Arenaria at Castleton so, wherever the 

 underlying rock of a country comes to the surface, do 

 the cottages, and most of the houses, built as they 

 are, and as a matter of course, of the material that lies 

 nearest to hand. At Lymm this is the uppermost mem- 

 ber of the great system of sea-deposits called by the elder 

 geologists the "New Red Sandstone," but the upper 

 layers of which, having been found to differ in certain 

 important particulars from the lower ones, are now dis- 

 tinguished by the name of the " Trias." England was 

 not always the " tight little island " that it is now. Where 

 Cheshire now exists, and over all those contiguous por- 

 tions of the country which possess for their uppermost 

 crust of subjacent rock the same description of sandstone 

 as that of Lymm, long, long ago, twice every day came 

 in the tide, just as we see it breaking at half high-water 

 over the mud-flats near the embouchures of certain great 

 rivers. Then it was that these wonderful foot-marks 

 were impressed, and the mode is no less palpable than 

 the fact. 



At low-water the mud-flats were traversed by these 

 ugly reptiles how many, no one can tell, probably a 



