TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 81 



the quantity of oxide of iron and the phosphates, says the author, but also in the 

 blood of the animals reared upon it ; so that the inhabitants upon that system take 

 in a minimum quantity of these constituents of the blood, compared with that taken 

 in by the inhabitants of the Cheshire sandstone. He stated that sheep were liable 

 to an£emia-— a fact which he attributed to sheep-walks being npon trap and lime- 

 stone hills; in the soil of which there is but little, if any, iron. 



On the Glaciated Condition of the Surface of the Triassic Sandstone around 

 Liverjpool. By G. H. Moeton, F.O.S. 



The most recent progress in local geology has resulted from the examination of 

 the superficial or di-ift deposits which cover the country, and the discoveiy of the 

 glaciated condition of the surface of the sandstone beneath. These superficial ac- 

 curuulations have been divided into Postglacial deposits (consisting of drift sand, 

 bluish silt or mud, submarine forests) and Glacial deposits (including upper drift 

 Band, boulder-clay, and lower drift sand). The latter subdivision is often absent; 

 and, imder these conditions, the Boulder-clay usually covers the surface. The 

 author explained that this clay is the dark red clay so extensively used in the 

 neighbourhood for the purpose of brick-making. It contains numerous pebbles 

 and boulders, varying in size from that of a pea to immense blocks 6 feet in dia- 

 meter, a large proportion of them being striated and gi-ound flat on one or more 

 surfaces by the action of the ice, similar to the specimens of boulders and pebbles 

 brought from the glaciers of the Alps. In 1859 he described for the first time to 

 the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool the evidences of the action of 

 ice on the sandstone in the neighbourhood. Having at that time only found such 

 judications in a single locality, he attributed the striated surface to the gi-ound- 

 ing of an iceberg in the glacial sea. In 1866, having found several additional ex- 

 amples of this giaciation on both sides of the river, but at no great distance from 

 it, he began to entertain the opinion that a glacier had descended the valley of the 

 Mersey during the early part of the glacial period ; and he made a communica- 

 tion to that effect to the Livei-pool Geological Society. Lately, however, he had 

 discovered similar evidences of ice-action at greater elevations, several miles from 

 the river, and consequently had been compelled to adopt a new theory, namely, 

 that a great sheet of ice once travelled over this part of the country from the 

 south-east to the north-west. The first striated surface discovered was between 

 Parkhill road and the Dingle, but had been destroyed by the erection of cottages 

 over the place. This surface is 120 feet above the sea, and the strata belong to 

 the pebble-beds of the Bunter formation. Two-thirds of a mile north the largest 

 surface occurs in the waste ground on the north-east of North Hill Street. It is 

 exposed at the present time, exhibiting several hundred square yards of ice-planed 

 sandstone, closely covered with fine lines and grooves, all perfectly straight and 

 pai-allel with each other, and running in the direction of 3o° W. of N. The sur- 

 face of the rock is 160 feet above the sea, and the strata belong to the pebble-beds 

 of the Bunter formation. Striated rock has also been found at Kirkdale, at Waver- 

 tree, and Thatto Heath, all places on the Lancashire side of the IMersey ; and at Ox- 

 ton and Flagbrick Hill on the Cheshire side of the river. The author assumed the 

 giaciation of the surface of the rock around Liverpool to have occurred before the 

 submergence of the land at the beginning of the Glacial period, and was after- 

 wards covered with Boulder-clay, which is partly the result of the waste of the land 

 and partly the cUhris deposited by icebergs during the period of subsidence. The 

 only alteration in the contour of' the land seems to have been in the reduced ele- 

 vation of the low ranges of the hills which traverse the district in the same di- 

 rection as the ice seems to have done. It might appear a bold assertion to state 

 that the country around Livei-pool was once covered with a gi-eat ice-sheet, at a 

 time when the land was some hundreds of feet higher than it is now ; and that it 

 ^terwards subsided beneath the sea, when floating ice brought from the Lake-dis- 

 trict and Scotland debris which became scattered over the ice-gi-ouud rocks in the 

 form of Boulder-clay. 



1870. ■ . ~ 6 ■ 



