tunnels, one of which both begins and ends in Lancashire. The rock composing them is millstone-grit, with its customary gray and weather-beaten crags and ferny ravines. Plenty of tell-tale gullies declare the vehemence of the winter storms that beat above, and in many of these the rush of water never ceases. Those who seek solitude, the romantic, and the picturesque, know these hills well; in parts, where there is moorland, the sportsman resorts to them for grouse.

In various places the rise of the ground is very considerable, far greater than would be anticipated when first sallying forth from Manchester, though on clear days, looking northwards, when a view can be obtained, there is pleasant intimation of distant hills. Rivington Pike, not far from Bolton, is 1545 feet above the sea-level. Pendle, near Clitheroe, where the rock changes to limestone, is 1803. The millstone-grit reappears intermittently as far as Lancaster, but afterwards limestone becomes predominant, continuing nearly to the slate rocks. It is to the limestone that Grange, one of the prettiest places in this part of the country, owes much of its scenic charm as well as salubrity. Not only does it give the bold and ivied tors which usually indicate calcareous rock. Suiting many kinds of ornamental trees, especially those which retain their foliage throughout the year, we owe to it in no slight measure the innumerable shining evergreens which at Grange, even in mid-winter, constantly tempt one to exclaim with Virgil, when caressing his beloved Italy, "Hic ver assiduum!"

The southernmost part of the county has for its surface-rock chiefly the upper new red sandstone, a formation not favourable to fine hill-scenery, though the long ridges for which it is distinguished, at all events in Lancashire and Cheshire, often give a decided character to the landscape. The highest point in the extreme south-west, or near Liverpool, occupied by Everton church, has an elevation of no more than 250 feet, or less than a tenth of that of "Coniston Old Man." Ashurst, between Wigan and Ormskirk, and Billinge, between Wigan and St. Helens, make amends, the beacon upon the latter being 633 feet above the sea. The prospects from the two last named are very fine. They are interesting to the topographer as having been first resorted to as fit spots for beacons and signal-fires when the Spanish Armada was expected, watchers upon the airy heights of Rivington, Pendle, and Brown Wardle, standing ready to transmit the news farther inland. It is interesting to recall to mind that the news of the sailing of the Armada in the memorable July of 1588 was brought to England by one of the old Liverpool mariners, the captain of a little vessel that traded with the Mediterranean and the coast of Africa.

Very different is the western margin of this changeful county, the whole extent from the Mersey to Duddon Bridge being washed by the Irish Sea. But, although maritime, it has none of the prime factors of seaside scenery,—broken rocks and cliffs,—not, at least, until after passing Morecambe Bay. From Liverpool onwards there is only level sand, and, to the casual visitor, apparently never anything besides; for the tide, which is swift to go out, recedes very far, and seldom seems anxious to come in. Blackpool is exceptional. Here the roll of the water is often glorious, and the dimples in calm weather are such as would have satisfied old Æschylus. On the whole, however, the coast must be pronounced monotonous, and the country that borders on it uninteresting. But whatever may be wanting in the way of rocks and cliffs, the need is fully compensated by the exceeding beauty in parts of the sandhills, especially near Birkdale and St. Anne's, where for miles they have the semblance of a miniature mountain range. Intervening there are broad, green, peaty plateaux, which, becoming saturated after rain, allow of the growth of countless wild-flowers. Orchises of several sorts, the pearly grass of Parnassus, the pyrola that imitates the lily of the valley—all come to these wild sandhills to rejoice in the breath of the ocean, which, like that of the heavens, here "smells wooingly." Looking seawards, though it is seldom that we have tossing surge, there is further compensation very generally in the beauty of sunset—the old-fashioned but inestimable privilege of the western coast of our island—part of the "daily bread" of those who thank God consistently for His infinite bounty to man's soul as well as body, and which no people in the world command more perfectly than the inhabitants of the coast of Lancashire. Seated on those quiet sandhills, on a calm September evening, one may often contemplate on the trembling water a path of crimson light more beautiful than one of velvet laid down for the feet of a queen.

At the northern extremity of the county, as near Ulverstone, there are rocky and turf-clad promontories; but even at Humphrey Head, owing to the flatness of the adjacent sands, there is seldom any considerable amount of surf.

The most remarkable feature of the sea-margin of Lancashire consists in the number of its estuaries. The largest of these form the outlets of the Ribble and the Wyre, at the mouth of the last of which is the comparatively new port of Fleetwood. The estuary of the Mersey (the southern shore of which belongs to Cheshire) is peculiarly interesting, on account of the seemingly recent origin of most of the lower portion. Ptolemy, the Roman geographer, writing about a.d. 130, though he speaks of the Dee and the Ribble, makes no mention of the Mersey, which, had the river existed in its present form and width, he could hardly have overlooked.[6] No mention is made of it either in the Antonine Itinerary; and as stumps of old oaks of considerable magnitude, which had evidently grown in situ, were not very long ago distinguishable on the northern margin when the tide was out, near where the Liverpool people used to bathe, the conclusion is quite legitimate that the level of the bed of the estuary must in the Celtic times, at the part where the ferry steamers go, have been much higher, and the stream proportionately narrow, perhaps a mere brook, with salt-marshes right and left. "Liverpool" was originally the name, simply and purely, of the estuary, indicating, in its derivation, not a town, or a village, but simply water. How far upwards the brook, with its swamp or morass, extended, it is not possible to tell, though probably there was always a sheet of water near the present Runcorn. Depression of the shore, with plenty of old tree-stumps, certifying an extinct forest, is plainly observable a few miles distant on the Cheshire coast, just below New Brighton.

In several parts of Lancashire, especially in the extreme south-east, the surface is occupied by wet and dreary wastes, composed of peat, and locally called "mosses." That they have been formed since the commencement of the Christian era there can be little doubt, abundance of remains of the branches of trees being found near the clay floor upon which the peat has gradually arisen. The most noted of these desolate flats is that one called Chat, or St. Chad's Moss, the scene of the special difficulty in the construction of the original Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Nothing can exceed the dismalness of the mosses during nine or ten months of the year. Absolutely level, stretching for several miles, treeless, and with a covering only of brown and wiry scrub, Nature seems expiring in them. June kindly brings