First report of the proceedings, recommendations, and transactions of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of the proceedings, recommendations, and transactions of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    111/140 (page 91)
    with boulders of distant rocks, covering great thicknesses of marl, gravel, and sand, the sand usually being the lowest. These accumulations are not only spread over the broad delta extending from the coast at Blackpool to Preston in the interior, but they rise at the latter place into consi- derable eminences extending in plateaux on the banks of the Ribble and the Darwent, for several miles inland. In certain places the marls, sands, and gravels contain shells of existing species, (Mr. Gilbertson enumerates about 20 species) not differing from those of the adjoining sea, above which they were found at various heights from 80 to 300 feet. The accumulations seldom offer proofs of regular bedding or tranquil deposit, but rather resemble the detritus formed upon an agitated shore; although from their diver- sity of structure they present distinct evidence of having been heaped up during a long protracted period. Seeing the height above the sea at which these shells are found, and that they are usually buried under a cover of clay, containing large boulders of Cumbrian rocks, Mr. Murchison infers that one of the last elevations of the central ridge of the North of England is thereby proved to have taken place after the creation of existing species of animals. The deposit was described as resting on inclined and con- torted strata of millstone grit, and shale, and an overlying red sandstone, (banks of the Ribble and Darwent,) and upon the edges of the productive coal measures near Chorley. This communication was followed by a discussion, in which Mr. Greenough, Mr. Murchison, and Mr. Phillips took part, on the application of these observations to resolve the question of the change of level on the coast of Lancashire, and on that of Yorkshire, where gravel deposits containing marine shells of existing species have been described by Mr. Phillips as diluvium.