94 
NEOZOIC ROCKS. 
Then came a change once more. In place of the wide-spread 
marine conditions that prevailed during the Carboniferous period, 
we get evidence of this district having formed part of a large con- 
tinental area. Instead of accumulations of pure grey limestone 
taking place in the clear water of an open sea, we get evidence of 
the subaerial waste of an old continent somewhere out to the east 
of England being brought down by rivers, and swept about by strong 
and ever-changing currents, in a large inland lake, whose nearest 
analogues at the present day seem to be the Caspian, the Dead 
Sea, Lake Lahontan, &c. Instead of the varied and abundant life 
of the Carboniferous period, we find a few dwarfed and stunted 
forms, which seems to suggest by their form and their size that they 
struggled through life under conditions anything but suitable for 
their full development. Part of the time the waters of the old 
inland lake seem to have been so surcharged with the iron, the 
lime, the salt, the magnesia, and the various other substances 
carried down in solution by the rivers, that it was possible for only 
terrestrial, or, at the most, amphibious, animals to subsist there. 
Strange, uncouth-looking monsters many of these were, too, if one 
may form any idea of their shape from the scanty traces they have 
left here ; and it is far from unlikely that we may now, at this crag, 
be only a few feet below the former level of the surface where these 
gigantic frog-like, tortoise-like, lizard-like, and bird-like animals once 
roamed on the shores and waded in the shallows of the old lake. 
For we have evidence that this old lake, and the rocks that were 
accumulated in it once went completely over the spot we now stand ; 
and I believe there is also evidence that it extended also over the 
Lake District as well, for the Lake District, I believe, had not 
been upheaved and denuded into existence as a mountain region 
in those old days. 
Conditions similar to what I have endeavoured to describe pre- 
vailed throughout the entire period of formation of well on to four 
thousand feet of rock. ‘Then came a change, and the sea once 
more gained admittance. I would point out that in this fact we 
seem to get evidence that the old inland lake must have occupied 
