92 



T. M. READE ON THE DEIET-BEDS OF THE 



is very striking to see these records of a Glacial age extracted from 

 under the busy offices and warehouses of Liverpool. Brick-pits are 

 studded all round the town. In the excavations of the Granby- 

 Street Board Schools, Toxteth Park, of which I was the architect, the 

 Boulder-clay was covered, first with a soft blue clay, evidently the 

 washings of the Boulder-clay, probably subaerial, about 2 feet thick, 

 then "Washed drift sand," covered by a peat-bed with remains of firs 

 therein, and then surface soil. There is nothing special to notice 

 about the clay of the brick-pits. When the Boulder-clay is absent, 

 granitic and other glaciated erratics are often met with resting 

 directly on the rock. In an excavation on the side of the lake in 

 Sefton Park the surface of the rock below thin beds of sand and 

 gravel was worn smooth as if by a stream of water. A section of 

 the cutting at Bootle-Lane Station is given in Part T. of this paper, 

 Peb. 1874, p. 28 ; the bed of Boulder-clay No. 6 resembles the bulk 

 of the clay disclosed by the Widnes boreholes. 



River-cliffs. — One description will do for these Boulder-clajr cliffs. 



At Egremont there is a divisional seam of sand in the Boulder- 

 clay; and Mr. Mackintosh* argues that below this the clay is 

 " Lower Boulder-clay," and above it the " Upper." Between the 

 Dingle and Garston a similar divisional seam of gravel occurs. I 

 will reserve the discussion of the relations of these beds until my 

 description is finished. The cliff south of Garston also shows a 

 divisional plane with a few pebbles marking it. Boulder-clay cliffs 

 are to be seen near Eastham ; but to describe them would be only 

 reiterating what I have alreadv said. 



Drift on the Cheshire side of the Mersey Basin. 



That portion of the peninsula of Wirral draining into the Mersey 

 is generally, excepting over the more prominent elevations, covered 

 with a Boulder-clay answering to that on the Lancashire side ; 

 where the base is exposed the same phenomenon of red sand and 

 rubble and yellow sand and rubble, according to the nature of 

 the underlying rock, is to be seen. This I observed at the excava- 

 tions for the new Birkenhead Station, in excavations for houses at 

 Oxton, and in sand-pits in the Happy Yalley, Tranmere f . Striated 

 rock-surfaces have been recorded also from time to time by various 

 observers. From an examination I made in 1877, before reporting 

 to the Wallasey Board on a site for the proposed cemetery, I came to 

 the conclusion that on the coast just beyond the " Bed Noses " there 

 exists a sea-cliff buried in Boulder-clay, which is again covered with 

 blown sand. Borings at Leasowe Castle by Mr. Cunningham, reported 

 to the British Association in 1854, also showed that there was a con- 

 siderable and undetermined thickness of Boulder-clay near the shore. 

 The phenomenon of deep rock-gullies filled in with drift also 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxiii. 1877, p. 732. 



t Described by Dr. Kicketts in Proceedings of Liverpool Geol. Soc, Session 

 1876-77, p. 254. 



