494 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



to ratepayers is enormous, that on the stability of the 

 works themselves and their immunity from all chances of 

 accident depend the lives of thousands, and upon their 

 proper construction from end to end depend the daily 

 health and comfort of millions of people, the need of 

 accurate geological information and its efficient utilisation 

 in waterwork engineering is beyond all question. 



But geology not only has its uses for the miners, the 

 architects, the County Councils and the engineers, but is 

 altogether bound up with the art of agriculture — the 

 oldest and most widespread profession, if I may call it so, 

 in the world. All these soils cultivated by the agricul- 

 turalist are the broken up debris of the geological forma- 

 tions, and they vary from place to place and from district 

 to district in fertility and barrenness in proportion accord- 

 ing as the geological formations change, or their materials 

 have been transported by geological agents in the past. 

 And with agriculture and the comparative richness of our 

 soils is bound up the fact that each geological formation 

 plays its individual part in the comparative fertility or 

 non-fertility of every broad district of country, considered 

 as a whole. 



I have no doubt that the dwellers in Lancashire and 

 Cheshire could furnish me with hosts of examples, but I 

 will take two examples selected from the country best 

 known to me, namely, the English Midlands : The long 

 stretch of country underlain by the Triassic pebble-bed 

 formation of the Midlands, poor in sub-soil and weather- 

 ing to gravel, is even at the present day a region of 

 heath land and forest land ; dry, barren of population, 

 and of but little surface value. But side by side with it 

 upon its outer border runs for hundreds of miles a 

 narrower band of country floored by the formation known 

 as the waterstones. This waterstone band, rich in 



