north-easterly direction over Manchester, until it plunges under the same series of sands at Cheetham Hill. These middle sands in their turn are capped by the upper Boulder-clay of Newton, Fairfield, and Droylesden to the east of Manchester. The Boulder-clay of Northwich, therefore, is the lower of the two Boulder-clays of the Lancashire and Cheshire plain, and the sand beneath it with the mammoth belongs to a yet earlier age, or, in other words, is older than the first phase of the Glacial period, of which traces have been met with on the western side of the Pennine chain.
Fig. 2.—Section of New Victoria Salt-Company's Shaft, Northwich.
(Scale 130 inch to 1 foot.)
Soil, 2 feet.
3. Brown sand and clay, 9 feet.
2. Brown Boulder-clay of Lower Series, 37 feet.
1. Quicksand, with layers of pebbles, 32 feet.
A = Mammoth tooth.
Red Marl of Keuper, 16 feet.
(72 feet to Rock-salt.)
The series of sands and gravels underneath the lower Boulder-clay has been proved by Mr. Binney[1] to be very persistent in Lancashire underneath the lower Boulder-clay, resting very generally on the eroded surface of the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic rocks. A section recently exposed close to Birch Church, Rusholme, proves that it is more than fifteen feet thick on the south side of Manchester. The sharp sand and rounded pebbles of which it is composed render its marine origin very probable, the only fossil hitherto discovered in it being the tooth above described.
The remains of the mammoth have been found on the borders of
- ↑ Proceedings Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester, 19 March and 12 Nov. 1872; Statistical Society of Manchester, 1841.
