167 
NOTES ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF 
NORTH-WEST CUMBERLAND. 
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S. 
(Read at the Workington Annual Meeting. ) 
ALL residents in that part of Cumberland which borders the Solway 
know how small is the area in which solid rock is visible at or near 
the surface compared with that occupied by stony clay, gravel, 
loam, or peat. This is especially the case with the district lying 
on the north-west side of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway and 
south-east of the Eden, over the greater part of which no traces of 
the underlying rocks appear. Yet the visitor to Aspatria and West 
Newton, Shawk Beck, Wetheral, the rivers Lyne and Esk at Kirk- 
linton and N etherby, and other localities that might be mentioned, 
will find that beneath these superficial beds are thick sandstones 
and other rocks, the arrangement of which bears no relation to that 
of the overlying formations. It is not, however, of these lower, or, 
in geological language, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, and Liassic 
rocks, that I have anything to say here, as their influence on the 
shape of the ground near the Solway is mainly of a remote and 
general kind, the various ridges and other surface features being 
usually due entirely to the superficial beds. As we recede from 
the Solway the underlying rocks occupy a larger and larger pro- 
portion of the surface, and their influence on the shape of the 
ground becomes more manifest, The diagramatic section will 
explain better than many words could do the relations of the 
underlying and overlying beds to each other, and the general 
