TRANSACIIONS OF SECTION C. 489 
student that there is a haste that retards rather than promotes progress; that 
arouses opposition rather than produces conviction, and that injures the cause 
of science by discrediting its advocates. 
The following Papers and Reports were read :— 
1. Notes on Geological Sections within Forty Miles Radius of Southport.t 
By C. E. De Rancz, F.G.S. 
The sections in Silurian works of the Lake District and North Wales within the 
radius are described, also those in the Carboniferous limestone, Coal Measures, the 
Permian and the Triassic rocks, especially the Keuper sandstones and marls around 
Southport. The sections in the glacial drift of West Lancashire and Cheshire 
are mentioned, and the sequence and character of the overlying post-glacial beds. 
Southport is built upon blown sand, resting on peat, which is 79 feet below the 
surface at the sea-coast, rising inland to the surface; the whole series rests on 
the Keuper marls, which have been bored into to a depth of 187 yards at the 
Palace Hotel, Birkdale, without finding the base. Fragments of gypsum and pseudo- 
morphous crystals of salt occurred in the boring. The sections in the Mersey 
tunnel, now in course of construction, were alluded to. 
2. Section across the Trias recently exposed by a railway excavation tr 
Liverpool. By G. H. Moxtoy, F.G.S. 
During the last eight years a yery important section of the Triassic strata has 
been exposed in Liverpool by excavations for widening the line of the London and 
North-Western Railway Company. The section presents a solid wall of sandstone 
on both sides of the new railway-cuttine from Lime Street Station to Edge Hill 
Station, a distance of 2,300 yards from east to west. The height of the rock on 
each side varies. The strata exposed belong to the Keuper and Bunter formations. 
The pebble-beds of the Bunter crop out for 914 yards along the east of the cutting, 
but do not contain any marl partings, and not a single pebble of any kind has been 
noticed. Only two faults occur along the whole length of the pebble-beds exposed, 
and they are of very little importance. The subdivision ends at Smithdown Lane, 
where there is a fault, with a downthrow to the west, which brings in the upper 
mottled sandstone, the highest member of the Bunter formation, where it is not 
represented on the map of the Geological Survey or the fault recorded. The 
upper mottled is a fine-grained, soft, bright red sandstone with grey streaks, and, as 
it readily crumbles into sand, is never hard enough for building purposes. It crops 
out to the west from Smithdown Lane to University College, when a fault throws 
down the strata about 600 feet and brings in the Keuper sandstone, which is 400 
feet thick and interstratified with beds of marl. The highest beds of the Keuper 
are at the College ; lower strata containing the beds of marl crop out from beneath, 
and are thrown down to the west by faults three times in succession when the base- 
ment beds crop up in Lime Street Station. 
The section shows that all the faults throw down the strata to the west and 
bring in higher beds in that direction. It also shows the exact position of the 
fault between the Bunter and Keuper formations, which was not known before. 
The position of the Keuper as a wedge-shaped mass of sandstone, with the 
Bunter formation faulted against it on the east and west, is of great local interest, 
and it is easy to understand how the succession of the strata has not been satisfac- 
torily explained before, in the absence of any such a continuous section as that 
described. 
The remarkable absence of faults in the pebble-beds has an important bearing 
on the construction of the Mersey tunnel, which will have to be carried through 
those beds along its entire length. The section shows that while faults are 
1 Geological Magazine, Nov. 1883. 
