158 C. E. de Ranee — Pre- Glacial Geography of N. Cheshire. 



he was led to believe he must look to other causes besides the present 

 meteoric abrasion. Since accumulations of sand occur at or in the 

 vicinity of all the valleys of Yar-connaught that open towards the 

 west; and as in each of them there is palpable evidence that glaciers 

 once flowed down them towards the west, he cannot but be inclined 

 to believe that these sands originally owed their origin to glaciere. 

 That similar accumulationis do not always exist at or near the 

 mouths of the valleys in that country which open eastward — seems 

 due to their glaciers being feeders of the glacier of the Lough Corrib 

 valley, which itself was a branch of the glacier that flowed down 

 the valley now occupied by the waters of Gal way Bay ; however, at 

 the mouth of some of these valleys they do exist, and are described 

 in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Ireland (sheets 95 and 

 105). Furthermore, his belief is strengthened when he considers 

 that all the accumulations of this kind of sand in Ireland, with which 

 he is intimately acquainted, both at or near the sea-board, and inland, 

 have similar relations to valleys in which, if he has not observed the 

 traces of glaciers, yet it is not only possible but also highly probable, 

 that they once existed. Since the glacial period, on account of the 

 loose and frail nature of the ^olian sand, they have been a prey to 

 the caprice of the wind or other moving forces, and have been drifted 

 hither and thither, and their real relations to the more recent 

 deposits obliterated.^ 



III. — On the Pkk-Glaoiaii. Geography of Northern Cheshire. 

 By C. E. BE Eance, F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of England and "Wales. 



BETWEEN the mountains of North Wales and the sea, occur 

 two terraces, an upper composed of Boulder-clay sloping 

 towards the sea, and a lower, consisting of peat and alluvium, but 

 little removed above high-water mark, running far inland, where 

 broad valleys like the Vale of Clwyd breach the coast, and where 

 rocky headlands jut into the sea, as the Great and Little Ormes 

 Heads. The two terraces are almost entirely denuded away, but often 

 the lower one has alone suffered, as between Penmaen Bach and 

 Penmaen Mawr, where a bay in the rocks, so to speak, is filled up 

 with Upper Boulder-clay. It is quite evident that before denudation 

 of the coast took place, the peat plain had a far greater extension 

 than at present, which is proved by the fact of the occurrence of peat 

 and a submarine forest at Ehyl, in borings in the Dee, and around 

 the whole coasts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and southern Cumberland. 

 It is also evident that considerable denudation of Glacial beds had 

 taken place before the period of the old forests, and that the sea- 

 ward prolongations of these beds, which themselves rested on an old 

 sea-bottom, had been denuded away, and that a great plain, or series 

 of plains, formed much of what is now the Irish Sea, before the 

 forests came into existence ; the lower terrace now fringing the coasts 



1 These supposed glacier-formed sands must not he confounded with the accumu- 

 lations of shell sand that are found in many places on the Irish sea-board, and often 

 contain from 70 to 90 per cent, of calcareous matters. 



