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 |