44 
At the close of the Silurian period another gradual upheaval of 
the ocean bed took place, and as the land slowly rose above the sea, 
its waves planed away vast thicknesses of the strata, just as the sea 
was now doing along the coast-line hard by, until when at length the 
upheaving powers had got the mastery, and a tract of land stood fairly 
above the sea-level, the lower rocks were in many places exposed at 
the surface by reason of the denudation which had carried away the 
upper. This tract of land being thus upheaved, the rocks then curved, 
contorted, and cleaved, formed the roughly hewn block, so to speak, 
out of which atmospheric agencies had ever since been carving and 
sculpturing its present beautiful aspect. Around it were deposited the 
Old Red Conglomerate beds, then the Carboniferous Limestone seas 
probably only washed its base, and afterwards Coal Measures and the 
Permian strata were formed around. 
And so on through the whole of the great Secondary Epoch, 
during which the Trias, Lias, Oolite, and Chalk strata of the greater 
part of England were being formed, was this district probably above 
water and exposed to the denuding agencies of the atmosphere. Also 
through the whole of the Tertiary Epoch there was no evidence of sub- 
mergence until, in the midst of the last Glacial Period, the country pro- 
bably sunk beneath the sea to a depth of at least 1,500 feet. 
This immensely long stretch of time, from the Old Red to the 
present period, was considered, and with justice, more than ample, for 
the formation of all our valleys and glens by the atmospheric denuding 
agencies now seen in operation, and the wonder was rather that much 
more had not been removed ; for during the past ages the climate must 
have changed more than once, snow and ice alternating with almost 
tropical heat, and therefore every agent having its full power in turn. 
The Cumberland mountains were certainly of far greater age than 
many of the snow-capped ranges of foreign countries, the Alps, the 
Apennines, and much, at any rate, of the Himalayas ; these were but 
infants in age compared with our humble English group. We learn then 
that what we were apt to consider destruction and decay might be but 
the harmonious ringing out of Nature’s changes. 
The paper was illustrated by drawings, diagrams, and water colours 
by Messrs. J. C. WARD, A, BIGGE, and O. B, LOMAX, 
