26 



LIAS IN SHROPSHIRE AND CHESHIRE. 



But if no useful practical results attend the discovery of this large mass of Lias, its 

 detached position gives rise to interesting geological speculations. Seeing that it is sixty 

 miles from the nearest point of the main escarpment of that formation in Worcestershire 

 and Warwickshire, and nearly two hundred miles distant from the Lias of the north-east 

 coast of Ireland, may we infer that the deposit was at one time continuous between these 

 remote places ? Was it connected at any period with those still more remote beds of the 

 same age, and containing the same fossils, which are spread over the Hebrides, and appear 

 at Brora on the north-east coast of Scotland ? Or, shall we conclude that these isolated 

 patches were originally deposited in widely distant bays, separated from each other by 

 ridges of older rock ? It is perhaps impossible to answer satisfactorily all these questions, 

 but in a future chapter I shall endeavour to show, that in this region at all events, certain 

 phenomena of elevation entitle us to speculate on the probable former connexion of the 

 outlier of North Salop, with the main mass of the formation in Warwickshire and Wor- 

 cestershire, 



