RAMBLING THOUGHTS IN A HANLEY MARL 



PIT. 



BY J. E. DAVIS. 



I SEE by the notice issued convening this special meeting of 

 the North Staffordshire Naturalists' Field Club that the spot 

 on which we are assembled is described as Messrs. Hampton's 

 "marl works." "What is marl?" is a question you may 

 naturally ask. Stumbling at the very threshold, I at once 

 confess I cannot tell you. The reason I cannot tell you is 

 that the word is applied in various places to very different 

 substances. If you ramble a few miles to the south-west, 

 on the Shropshire border of Staffordshire, you will see in 

 the middle of red fields large hollow places or pits, now 

 covered with brushwood and trees. If you inquire, you are 

 told they are marl holes, whence in former days marl was 

 taken and spread upon the adjacent land as manure. 

 There is not the slightest resemblance, geologically or chemi- 

 cally, as far as I am aware, between the red so-called marl 

 of that district and the light bluish-grey marl now before 

 us. I do not wish to under-rate the value of the marl works 

 to the owner or his lessees, but I apprehend that it would be 

 a farm of very peculiar character whose fields would be im- 

 proved by, and a farmer of equally peculiar views who 

 would desire to see them covered by, a dressing of the raw 

 material on which we are standing. In other parts of 

 England you will find clays and sands, very different from 

 either this light clay or the red clay I have mentioned, also 



