116 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
gone no action of water ; millstone grits ; a piece of limestone 
from the Eibble^ whicli liad undergone a good deal of attrition j 
and some granites, nearly all of whicli were round. Many of 
tlie latter in this neighbourhood show strice. Fragments of coal 
measure rocks, some of two tons' weight, occm' perfectly angular, 
as if from the quarry. After noticing, in general terms, the 
range of this drift, and the fact that, occasionally, thin beds of 
peat were found in portions of the till, Mr. Binney spoke of its 
variable thicknesses. In the valley of the brook, at Bolton near 
the new gas pit, it is only 11 feet thick. At Mr. Fitzgerald's 
new pit, at Pendleton, it reached 19 feet. In the higher parts 
of Manchester, it is nearly 60 feet. Between Miles Platting 
and Newton, it is 75 feet; at the Horse Pastures Pit, Poynton, 
75 feet ; at Captain Fold, Heywood, 72 feet j at the Nook, Koch- 
dale, 13 feet 6 inches ; and at the Dane Viaduct, 20 feet. The 
only organic remains he had found in it, were some seeds, pieces 
of wood and bones, in the beds of peat in the eastern parts of 
Lancashire and Cheshire j but, at Ormskirk, Mr. Harkness had 
found ten species of marine shells in it. Mr. Binney next de- 
scribed the gravel and sand No. 2: — 
"This deposit forms the dry and light soils of Lancashire 
and Cheshire, and is of a very variable character, often consist- 
ing of a fine forest sand, with beds of drifted coal in it, as seen 
in Higher Broughton, sometimes of a fine stratified gravel of 
well-rounded pebbles, similar to those contained in the till, as 
shown at Bowdon, and more rarely of coarse unstratified gravel, 
as exposed at Hazel Grove. It generally caps the till, and 
often is found on the higher portions of the upper new red sand- 
stone in Cheshire, as on Delamere Forest, as well as on the less 
elevated parts under peat bogs ; but in the latter positions it 
seldom exceeds a yard or two in thickness, and is valuable for 
the pm'pose of manufacturing glass, the suberic acid of the peat 
having deprived the sand of its oxide of iron. The gently rising 
lands of both Lancashire and Cheshire are generally composed 
