660 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 22, 
picked up on the North-Cheshire beach, most of which are no doubt 
washed out of the main peat and the overlying Bithinia and Tellina 
sands. Amongst those preserved in the Liverpool Museum are some 
of Nero, Antoninus Pius (4.p. 138-160), Marcus Aurelius, others 
struck at Carthage, others struck by Canute and by various English 
kings from William I. to William III. Various antiquities have 
been described by Dr. Hume from this coast in his ‘ Ancient Meols ;’ 
but the exact position from which they were derived is in almost 
every case extremely doubtful. But after carefully examining all the 
objects from the coast of Wirral in the Liverpool Museum, as well 
as the coast-section, the following correlation of historical periods 
with the geological formations appears to be warranted :— 
Recent to Norman Conquest...... Sand dunes. 
Danes and Saxons.............. B.-tentaculata sand. 
AXONS nen eaten oieareyin GM nme nay era Peat and made earth. 
Saxons and Romans............ Tell.-balthica sand. 
iomansiands Celts sane sass { Main peat. 
Gel rare ae eM Rides Ge Ch Mae | e lower portion. 
Paleeolithic-weapons race ........ Lower blue silt. 
INojtrace olan: eer ne sie ere Lowest peat. 
Liverpool and the Country between the Rwers Alt and Douglas.— 
The form of the ground of this tract has already been mentioned as a 
great plain covered with peat-moss (fig. 3), mostly below high-water 
mark, with the exception of the few miles between Liverpool and 
Bootle, where some hard beds of the Trias, thrown up by faults, form 
one or two lines of escarpment, more or less covered with Boulder- 
drift. The peat and other postglacial deposits fringed this compara- 
tively high ground, and connected the low grounds of the Alt plain with 
those of Wirral described above. The reexcavation of the valleys after 
the glacial period appears to have been nearly complete before the 
period when the peat and its underlying blue clays were formed and 
deposited ; for we find these deposits, not only at the bottom of the 
rivers Dee and Mersey and the old tributary of the latter, Wallasey 
Pool, but in the bottoms of all the little narrow brook-valleys on 
either side of the Ribble, as well as under the alluvium at the bottom 
of the great drift-cut gorge of that fine river. The deposition of 
freshwater silt, and the subsequent growth of peat, over so large a 
tract, embracing the whole of the north-west of England, must neces- 
sarily have been produced by some great cause tending to obstruct the 
natural drainage, causing the accumulation of vast freshwater lakes, 
afterwards land covered with dense forests, destined again to become 
swampy marshes, eventually choked with the growth of peat-moss. 
An examination of the postglacial deposits between the rivers 
Mersey and Ribble tends in some measure to throw light upon the 
conditions which may have produced this obstruction of drainage. 
This peat-moss plain (shaded in fig. 3) is bounded to the east by a tract 
of country with an average elevation of 125 feet, separated from the 
lower plain by what may be called a double cliff, the first, of pregla- 
cial age (formed in the hard Keuper Sandstone rocks), being concealed 
