We have an upper estuary of the Mersey formed like a huge bottle with a narrow neck entrance at Seacombe, through which the tide rushes at springs at the rate of five or six knots. At Rock Ferry this estuary, like a fan, spreads out to Widnes, Runcorn, Ellesmere Port, and Garston. This vast basin is filled by the tidal waters twice in each day, forming a great lake; at low water we have a vista of sandbanks and water, very beautiful in their colour and light effects, the favourite haunt of wildfowl, which in olden time filled the decoys at Hale and Widnes. During the Parliamentary Inquiry into the proposal to construct the Manchester Ship Canal, it was given in evidence that each tide brought into this bottle-necked estuary 100,000 tons of sand, which was held by the water in mechanical suspension and deposited on the banks at slack water, which takes place at the top of high water. The ebb tide carries this sand out again. About half ebb a process of erosion takes place. Tidal streams form through the sand banks, and gradually underpin the sand, which falls into these streams and is carried out to sea. On a quiet summer evening the process of erosion going on can be heard at Bromborough, the loud reports caused by the falling sands being distinctly audible. This Riddle of the Sands makes quite a fairy tale, so full of surprises, so wayward and erratic. Craft and even ships which have disappeared long since suddenly come into view. The coals which fall overboard when coaling our great liners in the Sloyne creep along the bottom and pile themselves on to the sandbanks, and form a welcome supply of fuel to the villagers. Wells of beautiful fresh spring water bubble up on the shore at Shodwell, and formerly supplied the Runcorn coasters with water. At the mouth of the Alt, and also at Hoylake, the low tides expose the remains of two remarkable primeval forests, from which have been gathered many tokens of long bygone generations. There is one thing these sands will not do. They will not obey the dictates of man unless they conform to their moods and methods. The original scheme for the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal proposed to cut a channel through the sands from Runcorn to deep water at Garston, a distance of about ten miles, protected on either side by training walls of stone. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board very strongly and successfully opposed this part of the scheme, maintaining that by thus stereotyping the channel, the process of erosion would be destroyed and the estuary would become permanently silted up with sand. There would not be a sufficient head of water impounded each tide to keep the sea channels and approaches to the Mersey scoured and fit for navigation.