TOWN GEOLOGY




PREFACE



This little book, including the greater part of this Preface, has
shaped itself out of lectures given to the young men of the city of
Chester. But it does not deal, in its present form, with the geology
of the neighbourhood of Chester only. I have tried so to recast it,
that any townsman, at least in the manufacturing districts of England
and Scotland, may learn from it to judge, roughly perhaps, but on the
whole accurately, of the rocks and soils of his own neighbourhood.
He will find, it is true, in these pages, little or nothing about
those "Old Red Sandstones," so interesting to a Scotchman; and he
will have to bear in mind, if he belong to the coal districts of
Scotland, that the "stones in the wall" there belong to much older
rocks than those "New Red Sandstones" of which this book treats; and
that the coal measures of Scotland, with the volcanic rocks which
have disturbed them, are often very different in appearance to the
English coal measures. But he will soon learn to distinguish the
relative age of rocks by the fossils found in them, which he can now,
happily, study in many local museums; and he may be certain, for the
rest, that all rocks and soils whatsoever which he may meet have been
laid down by the agents, and according to the laws, which I have
tried to set forth in this book; and these only require, for the
learning of them, the exercise of his own observation and common