MANCHESTER GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
121 
collected^ for it was useless to tlieorize without facts ; as had 
been . too much the practice as to drift. He expressed an 
intention to give a separate paper on the subject as to the neigh- 
bourhood of Manchester, and a hope that Mr. Ogden vfould 
favour him with some facts as to the drift at Hoihngwood. Mr. 
Ogden promised to do so. Mr. Binney said that, as to the 
gravels, they were sometimes stratified, sometimes not , but rocks 
of No. 2 had quite a different appearance. He was looking the 
other day at the large boulder on Stony Knolls^ Broughton, 
weighing at least five tons, and beside it he saw little pebbles of 
granite, greenstone, &c. in the clay, not more than the size of 
peas. Now what kind of current would it require to carry along 
the mass of five tons, and yet to deposit beside it, these very 
small fragments of granite ? Suppose, however, a large icebergs 
which when it came so far south, melted, and dropped at the 
same time the large mass of granite and the little pebbles, there 
would be no need of an enormous current to account for it. — - 
Mr. Gooch said, that in the Olive Mount excavation, on the Liver- 
pool and Manchester Railway, the boulders were very numerous ; 
not fewer than 20 exceeding from two to three feet in diameter, 
and perfectly sound. There had evidently been great friction 
upon them, by some means or other. Mr. Binney said that M. 
Agassiz mentioned instances of boulders polished as if by a la- 
pidary j and many of the pebbles he (Mr. Binney) had foimd in 
the clay, showed the strice and other marks of the polishing 
process. He showed some very perfect fossil shells from Bowdon, 
which he said could not have rolled far. Mr. G. Greaves said 
that at Tafford Moss there was no till immediately under the 
peat, but a very fine bed of sand, almost white ; but in the neigh- 
bourhood he had seen a thick bed of it, where they had sunk for 
draining. Dr. Black said it was the same at White Moss, which 
was all underlaid by the clay. Mr. Binney said, that, near the 
New Independant College, there was a little bed of peat and 
sand immediately under it; but the foundations of that edifice 
VOL. II. NO, XVI, N 
