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of crossing it as the other happens to do, receives several tributaries 
from the Howgill Fells, and flows as faras Teba. Here it is joined 
by the Birkbeck, which occupies the hollow forming the north- 
western continuation of the Ressondale valley. At the confluence 
of the two branches the Lune abruptly merges its direction of flow 
into that of the Birkbeck—that is to say, it turns sharply to the 
south—and, with that direction, enters the fine mountain gorge 
below Teba, and frets its way there along a rocky channel formed 
of some of the toughest rocks of the whole Silurian series, cuts 
right across the physical axis of the Lake District, and thence, 
away southward, across the lowlands, to the sea near Lancaster. 
What upon earth, it may be asked, could have led the river to take 
so extraordinary a course? Why did it go out of its way to carry 
the watershed of the Lake District right out into the comparatively- 
low ground north of Orton, instead of continuing that line along 
the highest ground, as people used to believe all watersheds went ? 
To this question the answer has in great part already been given. 
Like the other rivers occurring near the Eden, the Lune began to 
flow at a level higher by more than two thousand feet above that 
of its median course. ‘The surface, then, consisted of rock of one 
uniform character, whose general level (if I read the evidence 
aright) sloped away to nearly all points of the compass from an 
area situated above where, say, Morland now is. In this rock the 
course of the Lune and its tributaries was well-established. By 
the time when denudation had nearly removed this rock from the 
higher points, one branch of the Lune flowed southward past 
Crosby Ravensworth, Teba, and Lowgill; another, the present 
Birkbeck, flowed nearly with its present direction, but along a 
position three or four miles to the west; a third tributary flowed 
westward along a line just to the north of where the highest point 
of the Howgill Fells now is. In the course of long ages, the old 
surface (The Third Plain) here formed of tough grits, began to 
appear in places, through the removal of the Cretaceous rocks, 
more especially along the summits of anticlinal ridges, where, as it 
is well known, denudation in nearly every case proceeds with 
greater rapidity than along the synclines. (Here it is important 
