9 



those effects must have been more or less permanent ; because the 

 district was never again subjected to the marine denudation which 

 alone could wholly obliterate them : its only subsequent submergence 

 was partial, — at the glacial epoch ; and the glacial agencies them- 

 selves are commonly understood rather to have emphasized than 

 destroyed the pre-existing surface-sculpture. It was these Pennine 

 faults which shared with the undulation-fractures in the work of 

 sketching out the Lake-system of our Lake-land. The North-and- 

 South undulations themselves are connected with, and, as I read, 

 contemporaneous with the Pennine elevation. So that both 

 synclinal breaks, like Windermere ; anticlinal breaks, like some of 

 the minor basins ; and fault-basins, like Coniston-water, owe their 

 origin to the came causes and to the same epoch ; without which 

 our district would have been a mountain-land, but not the land of 

 Lakes. 



9. Share of Glacial Action in the Creation of Basins. We 

 have seen how large a part was played by entirely pre-glacial 

 operations in the origin of Basins. What was the part played 

 by Glacial Action ? 



In the closest scrutiny of the minor basins, I have failed to find 

 anything to shew that ice has been at work of erosion inside the 

 basin, however much it has smoothed the surrounding rocks. If 

 ice had any share in excavating these peat-basins, I venture to 

 suggest that it must have been by tearing out and carrying away 

 the already-broken blocks which filled them. The wonderfully 

 distinct traces of ice-action close to their brinks prove that, if 

 glacial erosion scooped out these basins, some tool-marks at least 

 should be left ; but it is not so. Further, the shapes of these 

 small basins are wholly incompatible with the theory that they 

 have been produced by frictional erosion; and the fact of the 

 greater permanence of eroded rock-surfaces makes it all the more 

 curious that the edges of these peat-mosses are not glaciated, while 

 the upstanding rocks around them exhibit stria as fresh as if they 

 had been cut yesterday. 



But granting that such internal fracture and fissuring as the 



