the end, however plausible they may make their case at starting. Before quitting this beautiful valley it will be salutary to pause for a moment upon its geological history, since, with the single exception of that part of the Mersey valley which lies between Didsbury and Cheadle, it is the newest part of our neighbourhood. The date, that is to say, is the nearest preceding that of the first occupation of the British Islands by mankind. The great ridges of Kinder Scout, Glossop, and Greenfield are immensely more ancient than any of the exposed or superficial parts of the country threaded by the Mersey at Cheadle, and by the Irwell below Prestwich. With the remainder of the chain of hills to which the Greenfield summits belong, those great ridges form the eastern margin of an enormous and very irregular stone basin, tilted up in such a way that the opposite or western edge is concealed far below the surface of the ground, nobody can tell exactly where, but in the direction of the Irish Sea, perhaps under it, far away beyond Southport and the sandhills. It is within or upon the inner surface of this great basin that all the other South Lancashire rocks and strata have their seat. In different portions of its huge lap are deposited the Coal strata (themselves often much elevated above the level on which the deposit took place, and this at various periods); then, in ascending order, there are deposits called "Permian";[23] above these, in turn, come the Triassic rocks; and over all (except on the higher hill-ranges) there is sand or clay, or gravel, both stratified and unstratified. This last, in the aggregate, is technically termed "Drift." The whole of this great surface was unquestionably once covered by salt water. At the latest period of that marvellous marine dominion, blocks of ice containing boulders floated in it; and wherever great heaps of sand now occur, we have the remains of ancient beaches or sand-banks, many of which were cut through by the water, while others are charged with pebbles that had been rounded by rolling over and over upon some primeval shore, rattling while on their journeys, just as at Walney Island we may hear the pebbles of to-day. The lofty eastern edges of this great stone basin are, as would be anticipated, quite free from deposits of drift. But everywhere else, westwards, drift covers up all the underlying rock, the latter showing itself only where rivers in cutting their channels have slowly worn it away.