Very distinct interest attaches to the physical history of this part of the coast, the elevation of which was at some not very remotely distant period, almost without doubt, much higher. Mr. Joseph Dickinson, the well-known geologist, and Government Inspector of Mines, believes that in certain portions it has subsided through the solution of rock-salt in the strata below--the circumstance to which the formation of most, if not all, of the natural Cheshire meres is attributed. The existence of the rock-salt has been clearly proved by the sinking of a shaft and subsequent borings, near Preesal, a village about a mile and a half south-east of Fleetwood. The thickness of the deposit is similar to that met with in the salt districts of Cheshire, at Port Clarence, near the mouth of the Tees, and at Stoke Prior, Worcestershire. The subsidence of the shore at Blackpool is, on the northern side, very palpable. Here the path to Rossall is pursued for some distance along the brow of an earthy, crumbling cliff, not very far from which, exposed at the lowest of low tides, there is a little insulated mound, upon which, according to well-sustained tradition, there once stood a cottage long since overwhelmed by envious Neptune. The great rampart of sand-hills which stretches for so many leagues, and which has been calculated to have an area of twenty-two square miles, is thought by another distinguished geologist--Mr. T. Melland Reade--to have taken certainly not less than 2500 years to form, probably a much longer time. Some of the mounds, however, are manifestly quite recent, interstratifications of cinders and matter thrown up from wrecks, being found near the base. A strong westerly wind brings up the sand vehemently, and very curious then becomes the spectacle of its travel, which resembles the flow of thin waves of translucent smoke. The wind alternately heaps up the sand and disperses it, except where a firm hold has been obtained by the maram,[39] or star-grass, the roots of which bind and hold all together. Decoration of the smooth surface of the sloping sand-hills is supplied by the wind-whirling of the slender stalks half way round, and sometimes quite so, when there is room for free play: circles and semicircles are then grooved, smaller ones often inside, as perfect as if drawn with compasses. Another curious result of the steady blowing of the sea-breeze is that on the shore there are innumerable little cones of sand, originating in shells, or fragments of shells, which arrest the drifting particles, and are, in truth, rudiments of sand-hills, such as form the barrier a little further in. [39] Maram, the popular name of the _Ammophila arenaria_, is probably the Danish _marhalm_, sea-haulm or straw, a term applied in Norway to the Zostera.