QEOLOaiCAL EXCDRSIOX, 5 



Limestone which at Dent produces the shell marble^ and has worn the 

 hollow at the foot of the precipice out of the laminated grits and shales 

 which overlie the Lower Scar or Main Limestone. The latter appeared, 

 for the first time in our route, at the bottom of the valley in the bed of 

 the Ure. The hills on each side of the valley rise through the Yoredale 

 rocks or middle seiies of the Mountain Limestone, and are surmounted 

 here by the Upper Scar Limestone. 



In the fields near Hawes, we gathered Epipadis latifolia, Orchis latifolia, 

 Listera ovata, besides other common species^ and noticed the luxuriance of 

 the beautiful melancholy Thistle. 



We left Ilawes by Weddale; the morning was misty, else the road over 

 Carn Fell is better worth climbing; following the course of a stream rising 

 in the ridge between Hawes and Ingleton, this valley is excavated in the 

 middle, surmounted on the south by the beds of the Upper Limestone of 

 Carn Fell, which here thin out very much, and capped by the Millstone 

 grits of Carn Dod. The same formation shews itself on the north side, 

 except that the hills clustering round the base of Whemside are much lower 

 than Cam Fell. On reaching the water-shed at Gearstones or Deerstones, 

 the whole face of the country changed; to our left stood the broad base of 

 Penny ghent, its top shrouded in mist; in front rose the tabulated summit 

 of Inglebro; and to our right, the long ridge of Whernside. Two slight 

 depressions mark the heads of Ribblesdale and Chapel- le-dale, which divide 

 these hills, and whose streams have cut deep beds through the Lower Lime- 

 stone, exposing fine sections of the Silurian rocks, which form the base of 

 all these hills. 



But the peculiar feature of the country is the Lower Limestone; it 

 stretches away for miles across the moor in straight lines of mural precipices 

 a few feet high, and when it begins to skirt the sides of the deep glens, 

 it descends in a series of step-like scars, of no great height, but most 

 regularly formed; while above it spreads out into immense tables of dry 

 bare rocks, without a blade of grass except in the cracks and fissures of 

 the Limestone. These rocks form the platforms upon which stand the 

 hills before us, which rise through Yoredale and Upper Scar Limestone, 

 and are capped by Millstone Grit, in some of them worked for its coal. 



The moors of this district are very dry, the rocks being so fissured and 

 broken that the streams flow in caverns far below their surface. On the 

 road to Ingleton many of these curious caverns are passed. We gathered 

 the Blue Butterwort, (Pinguicula vulgaris,) Arenaria verna, and Saodfraga 

 aizoides. As we descended to Ingleton, between Inglebro and Whernside, 

 the Silurian rocks became visible in vertical strata underlying the Lime- 

 stone; and here we first came on the line of the Craven fault, which has 

 thrown down the upper rocks to such an extent that at Burton, near 



