Prof. T. G. Bonney—Metamorphism in an Alpine Rock. 507 
Less than a century ago the site of Southport was marked only by 
a few fishermen’s huts in a cleared space in these sand hills. 
The hamlet was called South Hawes and was situated in the 
parish of Meols, a place of some antiquity, which still contains the 
“mother church” of Southport. The district was well described by 
Jamieson in 1636, in his [ter Lancastrensi (Cheetham Soc. Hd.) :— 
‘¢ Ormeschurch and ye Meales 
Are our next journey. We direct no weales 
Of state to hinder our delight. Ye guize 
Of those chuffe sands which doe in mountains rise 
On shore tis pleasure to behould, which Hoes 
Are called in Worold: windie tempest blows 
Them up in heapes.”’ 
“Worold” is the hundred of Wirral, the northern promontory 
of Cheshire, which is similarly fringed by Sand Dunes, villages in 
which are still called “‘ Great’”’ and “Little Meols.” The name is 
found in “Ravensmeols,” a destroyed village on the Lancashire 
coast, and the name “ meol” also occurs in the names of villages on 
the coast of Iceland, where Dunes of volcanic sand occur. 
Vi.—Own a Supposep Cast or METAMORPHISM IN AN ALPINE Rock OF 
CARBONIFEROUS AGE.! 
By Pror. T. G. Bonney, M.A., F.R.S. 
FEW years since it would have been flat heresy to assert that 
very clear proof would be necessary before we could accept 
a crystalline schist as the metamorphosed representative of a rock 
of Paleozoic age. Yet at the present time many who have made 
a special study of this branch of petrology would not hesitate to 
go thus far, and some would even declare that we do not know of 
any completely metamorphic rock which is not of Archean age. 
Certainly the stock instances of metamorphism in Wales, and espe- 
cially in Anglesey, in Cornwall, in Leicestershire, in Worcestershire, 
have utterly broken down on careful study. Outside the English 
Geological Survey probably no person who can use a microscope 
believes that the schists of Anglesey are altered Cambrian, or that 
the slates of this age are melted down into the quartz-porphyry of 
Llyn Padarn. It is becoming evident that even the metamorphic 
fastnesses of the Highlands are in danger, and that at any rate even 
_there the realm of “altered Lower Silurian” will be grievously 
curtailed. Startling facts are now and then adduced by the defenders 
of what we may call the ‘established’ (7.e. non-progressive) geology ; 
fossils are said to have occurred in crystalline non-calcareous rocks, 
Calamites in gneiss, Trilobites in mica-schist, and so on; but those 
who are familiar with the molecular changes which take place in 
the formation of such rocks as these will require the clearest evi- 
dence before they can accept statements so antecedently improbable. 
It may be worth while then to describe the result of my examina- 
tion of a deposit in the Western Alps, which is often quoted as an 
example of metamorphism in a later Paleozoic rock. The subject 
1 Read before Section C, British Association, Southport Meeting, 1883. 
