82 Reports and Proceedings. 



there can be no doubt that the whole range of the slope of these 

 hills will be found marked by this beach and shingle line, whenever 

 the turf and clay are removed. 



The turf, soil, and clay together, rarely exceed twelve inches in 

 thickness, covering the worn rocks and shingle of the sea beach. It 

 is a pure yellowish clay, free from grit and pebbles, with scarcely 

 any perceptible amount of lime in it. This clay fills the joints and 

 cracks in the limestone, and occurs in pockets of considerable extent, 

 as may be seen in the face of the quarries ; but it yields neither 

 shells nor fossils of any kind, unless the bones of the larger animals 

 recorded as having been found in fissures filled with this clay are to 

 be considered contemporaneous with its deposition. 



No decomposition of the limestone seems to have taken place since 

 the sea left the high moors of Derbyshire. 



In the discussion which followed, the president, Mr. Binney, con- 

 curred in the view taken by Mr. Plant, that these were ancient sea 

 beaches, and cited the discovery of marine shells on the western 

 slope of Axe Edge, by Mr. Prestwich, who had obtained specimens 

 of Turitella, Tellina, Cardium, and Litorina (all common on our 

 present coasts) from a bank of sand more than 1000 feet above the 

 sea. 



The Liverpool Geological Society, so ably presided over last 

 session by Henry Duckworth, Esq., F.L.S., F.Gr.S., etc., has printed 

 in its annual report some excellent geological materials which, with 

 the exception of the President's address, are chiefly provided by 

 Messrs. E. A. Eskrigge, F.G.S. ; H. F. Hall, F.G.S. ; G. H. Morton, 

 F.G.S. ; Edward Nixon, Mining Engineer; and Dr. Eicketts, some 

 of which have already appeared in this Magazine. 



On the 16th October last, Mr. G. H. Morton, F.G.S., communicated 

 an excellent paper, " On the presence of Glacial Ice in the valley of 

 the Mersey during the Post Pliocene Period." 



After describing at length the districts around Liverpool where 

 Glacial striae and ice-polished rocks have been observed, and the 

 several directions in which they indicate the ice-streams to have 

 flowed over the country, the author concludes : — 



From the examination of the glaciated surfaces, and of all the cir- 

 cumstances connected with them, I consider that the existence and 

 passage of a great bed of ice down the valley of the Mersey is the 

 only theory that will satisfactorily explain the phenomena. I can- 

 not enter here into all the geological observations that bear upon this 

 interesting subject. But one of the most important is the total 

 absence of that comprehensive extinct fauna which occurs in North 

 Wales — at Cefn Caves, within twenty-four miles from the Mersey. 

 About Liverpool the country seems to have been completely denuded, 

 partly glaciated, and finally deeply covered with Bo^^lder-c]ay, con- 

 taining boulders almost entirely foreign to the neighbourhood, many 

 of them being scratched, and all having probably dropped from melt- 

 ing ice-bergs, during a period of subsidence which followed that of 

 elevation and glaciation. 



