76 
The Plain of the Lake District fell tops (not their slopes any- 
where, which mainly consist of re-exposed areas of the Second,- 
and especially of the First, Plains) can be readily identified with the 
plain constituted by the summit levels of the great Carboniferous 
uplands on the east side of the Pennine and Craven Faults. The 
tops of the Howgill Fells form a triangular outlier as it were, of 
the same feature, which even now all but meets the plain just 
mentioned. The northern and the western slopes of the Howgill 
Fells belong, however, mainly to the Pre-carboniferous (or First) 
Plain, and represent the denuded core of a great Post-carboniferous 
flexure. 
Certain facts noted over a large area point to the conclusion 
that the Third Plain in and around Edenside has been formerly 
covered by a considerable thickness of newer deposits, which lay 
with a marked unconformity upon the denuded edges of all the 
strata from the Lias down to the lowest Siluro-Cambrian rocks. 
All the facts point to the conclusion that these newer strata lay 
with a remarkably-even junction upon these older rocks, and that, 
whatever their age, or their general nature, they were much-more 
easily wasted under subaerial denudation than even the softest of 
the strata that formed the platform whereon they once reposed. 
The only strata known to bear this kind of relation to rocks of the 
age mentioned, are the Upper Cretaceous. Possibly the Upper 
Greensand, the Chalk, and some of the Eocene strata may have 
formerly covered the whole of the North of England, and have 
connected the Later Neozoic rocks of Ireland with those now left 
in East Yorkshire. Many circumstances favour the conclusion 
that such was the case. 
The remarkable evenness of junction between the Cretaceous 
rocks and the surface of any older strata upon which they may 
happen to lie has long been noticed. It is well seen along the 
south coast of England where the Cretaceous beds are overstepping 
one after another of the Neozoic rocks as they trend westward into 
Devonshire. It is said to be the same in East Yorkshire, and in 
the North of Ireland, It is, again, very clearly shewn where the 
Cretaceous rocks of Belgium cut across the Carboniferous and 
