8 



basins, combined. From this we see how some districts, in spite 

 of glaciation, do not exhibit lakes ; because their strata, unhke the 

 ancient formation of our Lake District, of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, 

 and the Alps, have not been crossed and recrossed by axes of 

 elevation. 



But, after all that has been said, why does Windermere not run 

 in a straight line? Because the earth- waves are not straight. You 

 see that in a glance, for example, at the map of the Alps, whose 

 axes run northward from the Gulf of Genoa to the Lake of Geneva, 

 and then turn eastward; the Lake of Geneva itself starting from the 

 "cluse," greatest of all such cluses, at the corner where the turn is 

 taken. In the same way, the broad transverse waves which cross 

 the narrower — but steeper — ENE. and WSW. ridges of the Lake 

 District appear to present a concavity to the West, parallel with 

 the main direction of the Pennine Fault, and marked by the 

 multitude of minor faults which break up the district in lines 

 running NNW. and SSW. 



8. Basifis in Faults. The Lake-basins of our neighbourhood, 

 which do not lie in anticlinal or synclinal breaks, coincide with 

 faults in the direction just described. The East-and-West faults 

 do not usually influence the modelling of the Lake District ; they 

 are parallel with the Pendle Anticlinal, and were created (according 

 to Mr. Clifton Ward's " Physical History of the English Lake 

 District,") at the same epoch ; that is, before or during the Post- 

 Carboniferous elevation and denudation which raised this district 

 from the sea as a plateau whose general height was some few hundred 

 feet only above the present summits. It was ages after this, that, in 

 Post-Permian times, the Pennine axes were formed, with their corres- 

 ponding NNW. and SSW. faults, which shift the older faults, and 

 which are coincident with numerous valleys and more numerous 

 basins. On the Coniston Old Man nearly all the peal-mosses, as well 

 as most of the other physical features, seem to have been deter- 

 mined by these later faults. Their effect in breaking up a plateau 

 of denudation must have been, in the first place, enormous ; — the 

 downthrow of several exceeding half a mile. In the second place, 



