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first excursion together being up the river Caldew firom Mosedale. Dr. 

 Leitch, in liis short memoir, quotes Otley thus, regarding this excursion ; 

 "when I proposed to return, Mr. Sedgwick threw off his coat and went 

 on : I went across and showed him where granite appeared near the foot 

 of Willey Gill." This was the commencement of a true friendship which 

 lasted unto the end ; each trusted the other completely, and ascribed 

 everything done to good motives ; both lived to a very advanced age, 

 and left behind the memory of well-spent lives. . 



The paper entitled "Remarks on the Succession of the Rocks in 

 the District," first attracted the attention of geologists to our Cumbrian 

 mountains ; and Sedgwick pointed out to the Geological Society of 

 London, in 1831, how that Jonathan Otley had been the first to 

 recognize that "the greater part of the central region of the Lake Moun- 

 tains is occupied by three distinct groups of stratified rocks of a slaty 

 texture." These groups Otley first called the Clayslate, Greenstone, 

 and Greywacke divisions, the first representing the Skiddaw Slate, the 

 second the Volcanic Series of Borrowdale, and the third the Coniston 

 Limestone and Upper Silurian of the southern part of the district. This 

 threefold classification of the rocks of the mountain country forms the 

 basis of all geological work in the district ; and thus did old Jonathan 

 lay the foundation stones of the future building. 



Again in 1836, Professor Sedgwick, in his paper to the Geological 

 Society, entitled, "Introduction to the General Structure of the Cumbrian 

 Mountains," after describing the various subdivisions of the altered slate, 

 rocks around the Skiddaw granite, says "we owe our first accurate 

 knowledge of these subdivisions to Mr. Jonathan Otley of Keswick, who| 

 not merely described them in general terms, but gave their geographical 

 distribution with a very near approach to accuracy." 



In 1835 we find Jonathan in communication with Professor Phillipsjj 

 then curator of the museum at York. Besides his observations upon the 

 larger divisions of the rocky series of Cumbria, he had been noting sucli 

 matters as the distribution of boulders and the character of the red' 

 conglomerates of Kirkby Lonsdale and Mell Fell. The following letter 

 from Professor Phillips is dated York, November 25th, 1835. 



