nd now, of course, my readers will expect to hear something of the
deposits of rock-salt, for which Cheshire and its red rocks are
famous. I have never seen them, and can only say that the salt does
not, it is said by geologists, lie in the sandstone, but at the
bottom of the red marl which caps the sandstone. It was formed most
probably by the gradual drying up of lagoons, such as are depositing
salt, it is said now, both in the Gulf of Tadjara, on the Abyssinian
frontier opposite Aden, and in the Runn of Cutch, near the Delta of
the Indus. If this be so, then these New Red sandstones may be the
remains of a whole Sahara--a sheet of sandy and all but lifeless
deserts, reaching from the west of England into Germany, and rising
slowly out of the sea; to sink, as we shall find, beneath the sea
again.

And now, as to the vast period of time--the four or five worlds, as I
called it--which elapsed between the laying down of the New Red
sandstones and the laying down of the boulder-clays.

I think this fact--for fact it is--may be better proved by taking
readers an imaginary railway journey to London from any spot in the
manufacturing districts of central England--begging them, meanwhile,
to keep their eyes open on the way.

And here I must say that I wish folks in general would keep their
eyes a little more open when they travel by rail. When I see young
people rolling along in a luxurious carriage, their eyes and their
brains absorbed probably in a trashy shilling novel, and never lifted
up to look out of the window, unconscious of all that they are
passing--of the reverend antiquities, the admirable agriculture, the
rich and peaceful scenery, the like of which no country upon earth
can show; unconscious, too, of how much they might learn of botany
and zoology, by simply watching the flowers along the railway banks
and the sections in the cuttings: then it grieves me to see what
little use people make of the eyes and of the understanding which God
has given them. They complain of a dull journey: but it is not the
journey which is dull; it is they who are dull. Eyes have they, and
see not; ears have they, and hear not; mere dolls in smart clothes,
too many of them, like the idols of the heathen.

But my readers, I trust, are of a better mind. So the next time they
find themselves running up southward to London--or the reverse way--
let them keep their eyes open, and verify, with t