5G 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Sandstone Hammer in a Diluvial Deposit at Macclesfield. 

 Dear Sir, — I send a stone-hammer for your inspection, which was found 

 a short time ago near Siddington, about six miles to the west of this town, 

 in a boggy piece of ground, about 2 yards below the surface, and upon the 

 Red Marl. Its length is 7\ inches, breadth 3|, thickness 2\, hole for the 

 handle If; one end is rounded, the other vertically wedge-shaped; and it 

 is of superior workmanship, having been probably made at the close of the 

 stone-period. In the second volume of the ' Geologist ' there are several 

 engravings of sandstone-hammers, but none, I think, similar to the one I 

 have sent you. If you think this of sufficient interest, perhaps you may 

 be induced to give a drawing of it in your next number. In composition 

 it appears to partake in character with some of the lower grits which crop 

 out about two miles distant southward, with a north-westerly dip. All 

 the different beds of grit below the true coal-measures are well developed 

 in this locality, and their basement or Gosedale series are in general very 

 fine-grained, hard, and compact, and produce excellent material for the 

 roads. The Millstone Grit of this district possibly attains a depth of 

 more than 3000 feet. One or two of the upper beds of grit contain thin 

 seams of poor coal, which belong to the lower measures, and are only oc* 

 casionally worked, not being remunerative ; they are not very fossiliferous. 

 It appears rather strange that the natives of this part of the country 

 during the prehistoric or stone age should have resorted to the fabrication 

 of sandstone-hammers, when if the question of durability were at issue, 

 that qualification was always obtainable, since the whole of this neighbour- 

 hood was thickly strewed during the glacial period with almost every va- 

 riety of the hardest igneous rocks, interspersed with hard sandstones and 

 rounded limestones of various geological periods. The advancement of 

 agriculture has now almost obliterated those deposits from the surface of 

 the lower levels and plains, but on higher ground this is by no means the 

 case. The moorlands and elevated districts are still dotted by boulders in 

 every direction, and among some fields about four miles from here east- 

 ward, upon an isolated patch of ground some acres in extent and at an 

 elevation of 1000 feet, a remarkable colony of those erratics is still extant. 

 Blocks of quartz-rock, basalts, various granites, greenstones, porphyries, 

 etc., — more or less grooved, scratched, or smoothed, — lie scattered about in 

 wild and chaotic profusion. There they remain in their primitive position, 

 unaffected by time, untouched by the hand of man, and represent perhaps 

 a true aspect of this part of the country immediately after its last upheaval 

 above the waste of waters. At a mile and a half to the south of the scene 

 just described there is an extensive outlier of the drift, which contains 

 marine shells of arctic type, about 1200 feet above the sea-level. It is 

 chiefly composed of coarse sand and gravel, and in one place has an es- 

 carpment of 30 feet. This rests upon a plateau or terrace of shale and 

 grit, which denotes the ancient bed of a swift stream, that has now cut its 

 way almost perpendicularly through the latter strata to a depth of 20 feet. 

 About the middle of the section or escarpment there is a thick bed crowded 

 with large water- worn pebbles and pieces of rough sandstone or grit ; and 

 this is also the shell-bed. These have probably been tranquilly deposited 

 by stranded ice, after floating hundreds of miles from their Scandinavian 

 home. The whole of Macclesfield is built upon the drift at an elevation of 

 more than 500 feet. On the eastern side of the town there are two or 

 three distinct terraces or former levels of the river many feet above its 

 present bed, and the superficial sand and gravel overlying the boulder clay 

 contain quantities of minute fragments of boreal shells. 



