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If we were to follow these rocks for many miles, towards either 
the north-west or the south-east, keeping in a general way at much 
about the same distance from the Silurian area as we are here, we 
should find ourselves keeping to beds of nearly the same general char- 
acter, and often indeed we should keep to the self-same bed of rock. 
The beds would be found to be thicker and to increase in import- 
ance as rock features as we followed them towards the south-east, 
(where deeper water conditions prevailed when the rocks were 
formed,) while they would be seen in a general way to diminish in. 
thickness, and consequently come less into prominence as rock 
features as we followed them in a north-westerly direction. A 
traverse in a direction at right angles to this—from the Lake 
District outwards towards the Cross Fell Escarpment—would bring 
us, at almost every step, to rocks differing in some way or other 
from the rock we started from. We should find a series of layers 
of limestone, sandstone, and shale, piled one over the other, and 
tilted in such a way that one sheet of rock comes on above ancther, 
in the direction of the Cross Fell Escarpment, until we reach the 
highest beds exposed in that direction. To put it in another form 
one may say that, starting from the valley of the Petteril, over 
Penrith way, and walking up the gentle slope between there and 
here, we should come upon bed after bed rising out of the ground, 
at a rate somewhat faster than the general rise of the surface, until 
we eventually reached the very bottom of the series, and came 
down upon the central core of Siluro-Cambrian rocks, which rise 
from underneath the base of the higher group. Ii is important to 
realise that the older strata of the Lake District pass underneath 
the rocks where we now stand, and form a floor, extending hence 
right acrdss to the Pennine Fault, which abruptly elevates them 
from a great depth below the surface once more out to the day. 
This Sub-carboniferous floor or plain is the First Plain referred to 
below. 
If we were at a somewhat higher elevation than we are at the 
present moment, it would be apparent that, although we are standing 
on rocks known to be low down in the series, the higher rocks 
about Penrith form much lower ground than our present station ; 
