HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



S3 



■charm to the district, for the traveller finds he has 

 never to pass over long wearisome uninteresting tracts 

 between one point of beauty and another, but that at 

 every turn some new beauty meets him, each seeming 

 more attractive than the last, as the eye becomes 

 accustomed to Nature's plan. And here I should 

 like to remark that no one need fear to come from 

 other more exalted mountain areas to our humble Cum- 

 brian group of hills. If he be a true lover of Nature, 

 his Alpine or Scotch ramble will lead him to under- 

 stand and therefore appreciate the English mountains 

 all the better, and the longer he studies them, the 

 more he will find to study ; each day, each changing 

 aspect of nature, each season will reveal new beauties 

 to him, and as a true friend becomes more loved and 

 trusted in the longer known, so will Cumbria's hills 



perience proves this not to be the case ; indeed, I know 

 of but one good instance of a mountain summit at all 

 corresponding in outline to the convex (or anticlinal) 

 curve of the strata forming the mountain, and this is 

 in the case of Grasmoor, overlooking the foot of 

 Crummock Water, see fig. 54. In most cases, indeed, 

 the beds of rock forming mountain summits lie in 

 basin-shaped (or synclinal) curves, as will be clearly 

 seen by examining the sheets of horizontal sections 

 showing the geological structure of the country, 

 published by the Survey (see also fig. 55). This 

 being so, we must clearly give up the idea that the 

 mountains are individually due to the raising 

 of the originally horizontal beds into arched curves 

 corresponding to the mountain outline. 



Another possibility may be thus stated. May not 



Hope Gill, Dodd. 



Whiteside. 



Grasmoor. Ranncrdate Gill. 

 63 I 69 



Fig. 54. — Horizontal Section of the Geological Structure of Lake District. Scale 1 inch to 1 mile, f, fault. 



Ling Fell. Wythop Moss. Wend of Broom Fell. Whinlattcr. N.E. of Hobcarton End. Sleet Hozv. Outcrside. 



55 I 63 I I 



N.E.fr. Gnsedale Pike. Coledale Beck. 



s 



Fig. 55. — Horizontal Section of the Geological Structure of Lake District. Scale 1 inch to 1 mile, f, fault. 



endear themselves to those who live or stay for a 

 while amongst them, and the better known the better 

 will they be loved. 



But how have we come by these mountains ? 

 What is their origin ? What their history ? Are 

 they bosses and ridges pushed up out of an original 

 level area, each mountain or ridge upheaved sepa- 

 rately, the intervening valley bottoms representing 

 something of the original level ? Let us test this 

 idea, which certainly in some form prevails in the 

 minds of many. The first possibility may be illus- 

 trated thus : pastry in the process of baking is 

 upheaved into ridges and mounds ; examine these, 

 and the layers of paste are seen to slope away from 

 the summit in every direction, the original flat beds 

 or layers having been upheaved or thrown into domes 

 or long arches. Now a large proportion of the rocks 

 in our Lake District are distinctly bedded ; they have 

 been thrown down, many of them beneath the waters 

 of a sea, in more or less horizontal layers. If the 

 mountains are due, then, directly to upheaval, these 

 layers or beds will be found thrown into arches or 

 -curves, the outline of which will correspond to the 

 general outline of the mountain upheaved. But ex- 



the mountains be produced by igneous matter being 

 forced up from below, the matter itself either forming 

 the mountain protuberance, or carrying upwards, on 

 its back, as it were, the overlying rocky beds ? Ex- 

 amination again proves that this theory will not hold, 

 for in the first place there are but a few rocky knobs 

 or low hills— such as Castle Head, Keswick — wholly 

 formed of igneous rock, and there is no evidence 

 that the surface of the higher mountains or ridges 

 are all of them immediately underlaid by intrusive 

 rocks of igneous origin, or indeed that igneous and 

 granitic rocks more generally underlie the mountain 

 masses than the intervening lower ground ; in fact 

 the exposures of granite that do occur are for the 

 most part in valley bottoms and not on mountain 

 summits. Hence our general conclusion, thus far, is 

 that the individual mountains or mountain ridges, not 

 being upheaved domes or arches of bedded rock, and 

 not being protuberant masses of igneous rock, must 

 exist as mountains by reason of their separation or the 

 removal of the surrounding matter, that is to say, 

 the valleys must be either wide gaping fissures, or 

 caused by the carrying away of matter through some 

 process of denudation. 



