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were formed, their relation to the scenery to which they lent a character, 
and their influence on the plants which covered them. It was in this 
respect that he appeared before them as a geologist, “to this extent, no 
more.” And yet from such study, by no means profound or difficult, so 
large an amount of pleasure was to be derived that he was induced to 
lay before them the manner in which it contributed to make a fort- 
night’s holiday at Easter as instructive as it was delightful. 
Standing on some dominant point and noting the ridges of hills 
ending in a steep escarpment, and the multitudinous windings of the 
valleys at their base, the mind naturally inquired what forces had worked 
to sculpture the earth into this variety of form. The action of water 
immediately suggested itself. The streams trickled along the valleys, 
but the cause, if they were the cause, was out of all proportion to the 
effect. But the streams of to-day were but the ghosts of their former 
selves, and the hills but the degenerate successors of the primeval 
mountains. To solve the problem we must look to the action of larger 
and more impetuous rivers than our island afforded. He had 
represented on a diagram the lesson which Professor Ramsay said he 
learnt from studying the Moselle. A stream commenced its course on a 
high table-land ; a¢able-land higher than the present summits of Derby- 
shive hills. In process oftimeit dug for itself atrench. The natural slope 
of the land would initiate the direction in which its waters acted with 
greatest effect. Gradually, a high bank would be formed on the side 
on which the land sloped. In its rebound it would wash with force 
and in process of long centuries the banks -would eventually become 
the steep escarpments of the hills. The course of the Seine, near 
Rouen, was a splendid example of such action. But the manner in 
which a table land could be cut up into ridges by the action of streams 
was illustrated in the most remarkable manner he had ever seen by a 
rivulet which fell into the sea near Redcar, on the coast of Yorkshire. 
There, in miniature,was a table-land being cut up as it were before the 
eyes into the very forms of hill-sides, escarpments, and valleys, which 
on a grander scale he had been lately admiring in Derbyshire. 
This was not what gave to the scenery of Derbyshire its peculiar 
characteristic. That which most struck the tourist, was the strange 
fantastic forms in which the rocks were worn. On the summits the 
stony crests of the hills were weathered into castellated turrets, honey- 
combed as if they were made of sugar or salt, instead of hard stone. 
On the slopes of the hills they were sculptured into strange and fan- 
ee 
wat ee oT ee 
