114 T. M. Reade, — Post- Glacial Geology of 



by Trimmer ^ may be due to the same agency. The Esker drift in 

 Ireland is perhaps synchronous with the washed drift sand, and is 

 probably also a reconstructed deposit. An examination of numerous 

 excavations has shown me that the washed drift sand, in its normal 

 position, rests on thin beds of reconstructed gravel, lying on the 

 Boulder-clay; but that having been subject to sub-aerial denudation, 

 much of it has been removed and displaced, as shown by the interca- 

 lated soil and peat-beds which it occasionally contains. I have traced 

 it along the coast-line and inland, the whole distance between the river 

 Douglas and "Warrington. It is found under the mosses at Martin 

 Mere, Eainford and Bickerstaffe, and is generally well developed 

 along the 25-foot contour, from Scarisbrick to between Hill House 

 Altcar, and Downholland Cross. Thence it follows the valley of the 

 Alt, and lies in places 15 feet deep below Clock-house Bridge, and 

 also on the Aintree race-course. At little Crosby the construction 

 of a sewer showed a considerable extent and depth, containing inter- 

 calated land-surfaces, and also a seam of gravel several feet above its 

 bottom. It caps the Boulder-cliffs from Aigburth to Hale, and is 

 generally distributed in patches over a wide extent of country. It 

 is a quartzose sand, remarkably homogeneous in character and free 

 from pebbles, and its organic contents, as far as I have hitherto been 

 able to discover, consist wholly of vegetable remains. It varies in 

 colour from a bright yellow to a deep chocolate and a pure white. 



Inferior Peat-Bed and Subterrene Land-Surface. — On the coast of 

 Cheshire, between Leasowe and Meols, are to be seen exposed the 

 remains of two peat and forest beds — which evidently mark two 

 periods of elevation — divided by a blue clay or silt, containing Scro- 

 hicularia piperata and other marine or estuarine forms. A boring at 

 the Palace Hotel, Birkdale, showed, at a depth of 78 feet 6 inches, a 

 bed of mixed blue clay and peat, 18 inches thick, lying on the 

 Boulder-clay, evidently due to the denudation and destruction of a 

 land-surface contemporaneous with the lower forest bed in Cheshire. 

 The intercalated soil-bed, with tree stumps erect therein, contained 

 in the washed-drift sand behind Crosby Hall, I also consider of the 

 same age, as it underlies a continuation of the upper or superior 

 peat-bed; and in a section of the excavations for the foundations 

 of the Liverpool Custom House ^ the inferior peat and forest bed 

 is also shown, resting on the rock about 40 feet below high-water 

 mark, and is divided from the superior peat-bed by 10 feet of blue 

 silt. As the inferior-peat bed has been subject to great denudation, it is 

 only found in favourable and protected spots. At Bewsey Valley, War- 

 rington, a peat and forest bed, described by Mr. Paterson, from 5 to 6 

 feet thick, from which was taken out the skull of a bear, was ex- 

 posed by the excavations for the piers of the new railway viaduct.^ 

 On examining it in a later excavation by one of the piers, I 

 found overlying the peat a fine grey tenacious clay, remarkable as 

 being the only clay in which were present segregated particles of 



1 " On the Erratic Tertiaries, etc.," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1851, vol. vii. p. 201. 



2 Geology of the Country around Liverpool. Murton, p. 46. 

 ^ Paper on the " Geology of the Bewsey Valley." — Paterson. 



