Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/244

 <£hap. VI*. OP MANCHESTER. ,2*3 This account of the Celtic manure clearly points out to us the induftriou6 refearches, the minute difcriminattons, aad the jk> turate knowledge of the Celtic formers. And of thefe the Bri- tish appear to have been the heft, as they chiefly had marked the fuperior excellence of the. filvery marie". Both the Gal*- Ik and the Bikiih farmers had made the difcovery of feveral of thefe marks juft a little before the conqueft of Lancafture ". And the knowledge of this incomparable manure and its feveral fends die Britons of the midland regions mod have previoufly 'adopted froto the fbuthefn, and have now communicated to the Britons of Mancunium. The Siftuntii now firft opened their in* -exhauftible treafores of marie, and purfued the fpreading veins' of it in the ground, nor following them, as the Britons of the fotrthern countries were obliged to follow them, and as we now trace the veins of coal, not enlarging their quarries from a nar~ row mouth abdve to an ample cavity below * In France, where the marie generally finks eighty or ninety feet beneath the fur* face, and in South- Britain, where the un&uous chalk was de- nominated the filvery marie, filch a mining procefs would be a1>folutely necciffary and is ftill purfued in both. But the ge*- mrine marie of Britain lies much nearer the furface v feidotn more than feven or eight feet below it,, and commonly about three or four only. And in our own county particularly this beneficial manure is commonly found about two or three feet' only beneath, the level of the ground, and muft therefore have been always purfued, as itis ftill dug, to thedepth of as many yards only. And the marle-pits which the Mancunians now made, and • which were for ages probably the common marle-pits of the Man* cunian precin&s, appear pretty certainly to have been thofe large cavities upon Shudehill and in Marketftreet-lane which are now called, and have been for centuries denominated, the daubholes or the quarries of marie. The original quarries were. certainly near to the town, becaufe the precin&s at that time extended only a* ' little way from it. And thefe remained very lately in their ori- ginal condition of marle-pits, and appear fufficiently from the erapjha^-