C. E. de Rance—Sections around Southport. 505 
Various outliers of Basement beds occur in the Ormskirk district 
resting on the eroded Bunter beds, and they are well seen in 
Wallasey, the north-eastern promontory of Wirral. 
Keuper Frodsham Beds.—Vhese soft current bedded Sandstones are 
well seen in the Orrell railway cutting, and in the Frodsham railway 
cutting, in which these beds are exceedingly well seen, as they are 
also in the St. James’s Cemetery at Liverpool. 
Keuper Waterstones—The waterstones are largely exposed in the 
district lying between Irby and Heswell Hills, and the villages of 
Irby and Pensby are located on them. At Irby Hill these beds rest — 
on the Basement beds, which are coarse, well-bedded, and contain a 
few pebbles. 
The waterstones are seen at Liverpool, at the Toxteth Cemetery, 
where they were long ago described by Mr. G. H. Morton, under 
the name of the “Cemetery Shales.” An outlier of this subdivision 
is preserved by a fault in the railway cutting at Orrell, east of 
Waterloo. 
In this cutting an interesting section is still to be seen, first 
described by myself,! in which the waterstones rest on a con- 
glomerate top of the Keuper Frodsham beds. 
Keuper Marls.—These occupy a considerable area in the neigh- 
bourhood of Southport, where they were bored into to a depth of 
189 yards at the Palace Hotel, and where they are well seen near 
Brown Edge. Last of Fleetwood the Red Marls have been found 
in the thick deposits of rock-salt, as in the Cheshire district. In the 
latter area the best sections are visible in the banks of the River 
Weever, above and below Northwich. 
Lias.—This formation has never been discovered in Lancashire, but 
there is some reason to believe a tract of this formation may occur in 
a synclinal in the Keuper Marls, under the estuary of the Ribble. 
The evidence on which this assumption rests is the fact that frag- 
ments of some pyrites, evidently derived from the Lower Lias, are 
to be found washed up on the shore, in the neighbourhood of 
Hesketh Bank. 
Glacial Drift—Nowhere in England does the Drift perhaps more 
completely obscure the solid geology than in the greater part of 
West Lancashire. The valley of the Ribble at Preston is entirely 
excavated in Glacial Drift, which attains a thickness of about 200 
feet, and consists of an upper clay separated from a lower, by a bed 
of sand and gravel; very good sections were exhibited in the same 
beds, in the construction of the new railway station, and were long 
ago described by Sir Roderick Murchison, in the construction of the 
original station. Sections can still be seen in the Sand Pits, near 
Deepdale Station, on the Longridge railway; exceedingly good 
sections can also be seen in the cliff overhanging the Ribble at Red 
Scar, east of Preston, the triplex arrangement there can be well 
studied. 
The dome-shaped arrangement of the Lower Boulder-clay can be 
well seen in the fine cliffs extending from Blackpool to Norbreck, 
1 Mem. Geol. Surv. Expl. of Sheet 90, § 9. 
