256 
A great point is made of the complete removal of the debris, but this 
appears to be one of the strongest evidences against any sudden removal by violent 
current caused by upheaval. Debris removed by such currents would not be 
entirely removed, and whatever was entirely removed from the immediate site of 
the Woolhope valley would be found at no great distance inimmense and irregular 
piles. Where are they? If it is suggested that such collections of debris have 
since been removed by the ordinary processes of denudation, the answer of course 
is that ordinary processes of denudation could equally have removed them from 
the Woolhope valley itself. These sudden upheavals and subsidences of a character 
sufficiently violent to produce currents of water capable of removing absolutely. 
and completely so many million tons of debris, must also have shaken into abso- 
lute confusion all the stratato a great depth not only at the Woolhope valley 
itself but for many miles around. This we know is very far from being the case, 
indeed the most notable feature of the valley is the very orderly and undisturbed 
position of the strata, so much so that after full allowance for the several con- 
siderable faults that exist, for the dicing up of the rocks by the various lines of 
cleavage, which are not markedly in excess here over other less disturbed districts, 
one is filled with admiration at the very slight disturbance of the strata which has 
been caused by their being raised up into an arch of one mile in height ; this con- 
sideration forces one to the conclusion that the upheaval was of a slow and 
majestic character, and that it was not accomplished with much tossing violently 
up and down, like a terrier at a rat or a housemaid shaking a duster. 
But why must the Woolhope Valley especially require such violent 
processes to account for its denudation? Why must the processes there be different 
from and more violent than those which operated where we now are? The reason 
appears to be that at Woolhope we know that strata to the thickness of say one 
mile—though I cannot myself make the removed strata much exceed half-a-mile 
by the most liberal calculations—have been removed, while we are, or choose to 
suppose that we are, in ignorance of the amount of denudation that has taken 
place at Hereford, and assume it to be but trifling. But when we consider the 
certainty that an immense thickness of Old Red Sandstone has been removed from 
here, that it is very probable that the mountain limestone once extended entirely 
across this site, and that possibly still higher strata did so, we cannot safely give 
the amount of denudation—denudation as complete as at Woolhope—at less than 
one mile. Now if we add this to the known denudation at Woolhope, taken as in 
round numbers also a mile, we get two miles as the denudation at Woolhope to 
compare with one mile of denudation at Hereford. Thisis only a difference of 2 to 
1—I believe the true ratio is certainly not greater than 3 to 2; but let it if you 
will be 5 to lor10to1. We are again, I think, forced irresistibly to the conclu- 
sion that there can, if this be so, be no possible ground for assuming denuding 
agencies in the one case differing in kind from those in the other. 
If we assume, what I have already shown good grounds for assuming, that 
the rise of the arch, at Woolhope, was slow and gradual, and even if we assume 
that it rose with considerable rapidity at a remote epoch, we can see that it would 
