502 C. E. de Rance—Sections around Southport. 
‘sets,’ may be well seen near Withnell Station; on the top of the 
Moor occur thin coal-seams, with a Gannister floor, with Stigmarie. 
Overlying the Kinderscout Grit are the Sabden shales, which 
attain a thickness of 2000 feet, on the county boundary; they are 
well seen near Preston, at Sales Wheel on the Ribble, where they 
are intercalated with thin limestones with Encrinites, and other 
fossils. 
The Third Grit is generally a fine-grained massive rock; it is 
sometimes a conglomerate, as seen in the fine cliff known as the 
“‘Ratchers” at Belmont, near Bolton. Sometimes this bed is separated 
into two divisions by a bed of shale with marine shells. The shales 
overlying the Third Grit contain the Brooksbottom series of coals of 
the late Mr. Binney. 
The Haslingden Flags, or Second Grits, occupy a large area in the 
Haslingden district, where they can be studied in the numerous 
quarries where they are worked for building purposes, for which 
they are of great value; they are generally traversed by a bed of 
shale; the lower flag-band is quarried at Haslingden, the upper bed 
at Entwistle and Edgworth. On the surface of the flags may be 
noticed numerous rain-prints, sun-cracks, and worm-tracks. 
The highest grit below the Coal-measures is called the Rough 
Rock, or First Grit. It is a massive hard conglomerate, apparently 
made up of the waste of granitic rocks; near the base is a Coal-seam 
called the Feather Edge Coal, from the peculiar fracture it exhibits. 
In the neighbourhood of Accrington this Grit is soft and fine-grained, 
so much so indeed, that it is dug for sand, and the coal in it is 
called the “Sand Rock Coal.” The Rough Rock is well seen in the 
picturesque escarpment at Houghton Towers, between Preston and 
Biackburn, where it reaches its maximum thickness of 450 feet. 
The shale associated with the Feather Edge Coal at Rochdale 
yields 18 species of fossils, of which half occur in the overlying 
Lower Coal-measures. Of these 18 forms 15 are plants, and 8 shells 
of marine Mollusca; amongst the former are Calamites Suckovii, 
amongst the latter Aviculopecten papyracea. Indications of this 
fauna and flora, with a few additional forms, occur in the Millstone 
Grit series at three intervals below the horizon, viz. in a bed of 
shales in the Second Grit, in the bed of shale between the Second and 
Third Grit, and in the shale between the Third and Fourth Grit, 
pointing to a continuous land surface throughout the whole of the 
Millstone Grit period, and down into the Lower Coal-measures, 
from which surface the plants migrated, as from time to time the 
shallow sea-bottom, through the temporary stoppage of subsidence, 
and subsequent deposit of sand, became land, more or less covered 
with freshwater, at the bottom of which thin seams of coal from one 
inch to two feet in thickness, were formed. 
The Lower Coal-measures overlying the Grit series are not 
separated by any physical break, nor do they differ from them 
biologically. The shale beds increase in thickness, and the sand- 
stones become fine-grained, and the Coal-measures more numerous. 
