53 
Oi*dinary Meeting, December 80th, 1873, 
Kev. Wm. Gaskell, M.A., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
Mr. E. W. Binney, F.R.S., F.G.S., said that in the Liverpool 
papers a good deal of discussion had lately taken place on 
the rapid growth of the bar at the entrance into the Queen’s 
Channel. This is a subject not only of local but of national 
interest. Having had occasion to pass over the bar fre- 
quently in his passage to the Isle of Man, he had his atten- 
tion directed to the matter, and his friend our worthy 
President had supplied him with a copy of an interesting 
article from the Liverpool Albion of the 18th November 
last. Adam Evans appears to attribute this evil to the 
emptying of mud into the Mersey, and the writer in the 
newspaper states as follows ; ‘'Nothing is so important to 
the prosperity of the port of Liverpool as the maintenance 
of its entrance channels at sufficient depth. Several times 
lately the question has been named at the Dock Board, and 
more particularly at the meeting of the Board last week. It 
appears that Admiral Evans, acting Conservator of the 
River Mersey, has been for a long time urging the construc- 
tion of steam barges to take the deposits from the docks 
(which deposits consist not of soluble kinds only, but also 
of coal, coal dust, and all other matter which happens to 
fall overboard from the ships in the docks), and to convey 
them outside the port. That this is no new view of Admi- 
ral Evans’s is shown by the fact that in his report for 1848, 
as to the impropriety of discharging mud and other matter 
from the flats into the river, he pointed out the dangers 
attending the practice ; and if at that time he considered 
the system bad, how much more so is it now ? The deposits 
Peoceedinqs. — Lit. & Phil. Society. — Yol. XIII. — No. 6 — Session 1873-4. 
