o04 C. E. de Rance—Sections around Southport. 
only 850 feet, giving an average rate of thinning of 64 feet per 
mile for the 21 miles traversed. From these facts it would appear, 
that a special line of subsidence, or a contemporaneous synclinal 
axis, ranged through this district along a definite line, which 
gradually travelled to the north-east in time, from the neighbour- 
hood of St. Helens to that of Wigan, the Wigan coal-basin being 
a synclinal of deposition, as well as one of flexure. 
Permian.—The sections around Harcourt and Dalton in Furness 
are of very great interest, associated as they are with the occurrence 
of the valuable deposits of iron-ore found in the cracks and fissures 
of the Mountain Limestone beneath. These sandstones are largely 
developed at St. Bees, and are called the St. Bees Sandstone; there 
they rest upon the Coal-measures. A considerable area is occupied 
by Permian Sandstone in the Lancashire Fylde. Sections are to be 
seen in the railway cutting between Garstang Junction and Garstang. 
Further south, a representative of the Magnesian Limestone, so 
largely developed on the eastern side of England, occurs at Skillaw 
Clough, near Burscough Bridge Station, east of Southport; this thin 
limestone and its associated sandstone rest upon the denuded and up- 
turned edges of Millstone Grit. At Bedford Leigh, the limestones 
are thicker, and contain well-marked Permian fossils, as Bakewellia 
and Schizodus. 
New Red Sandstone.—The Lower Mottled Sandstone is well seen 
at Hastham, on the Cheshire bank of the Mersey ; it consists of fine 
rounded grains, which are generally segregated together by iron, but 
which occasionally run through the fingers like silver-sand, exhibit- 
ing what I have called the Millet-seed grains. A very hard compact 
form of this rock was penetrated in the Bootle boring of the Liver- 
pool Corporation waterworks, and at the Warrington Waterworks 
Co.’s boring at Winwick, in which a fine running sand underlaid the 
compact bed. 
The Pebble Beds.—These were proved by the Bootle boring and 
adjacent sections to be not less than 1200 feet ; they consist of rather 
hard coarse-grained sandstone ; they are well seen in the quarries 
round Liverpool and Birkenhead, and in the railway cuttings near 
Edge Hill and elsewhere east of Liverpool, and on the Parkgate and 
Hooton railway, especially about a mile east of Neston. 
The Upper Mottled Sandstone.—The yellow beds are well seen at 
Scarisbrick quarry near Southport; the middle streaked beds are well 
exposed in the railway cuttings near Ormskirk, especially in the St. 
Helens railway close to the town, where the current planes are cut 
off, and the eroded surface overlaid by the Keuper basement beds. 
The lower red beds are seen at Bromborough Pool in Cheshire. 
Keuper Basement Bed.—These are well seen near Southport at 
Halsall, and at Cleve Hill near Maghull, the building stones associated 
with them, and occurring at a somewhat higher horizon, may be seen 
at Storeton quarries, a few miles from Birkenhead; in this quarry 
occurs the celebrated footprint bed, from which were obtained the 
slabs now preserved in the William Brown Museum at Liverpool, 
and in that of the Royal Institution, Colquits Street. 
