175 



districts adjoining — at lower horizons, and in the Millstone Grit ; 

 nor is any note taken of the Boradale seam, so long worked in the 

 underlying Yoredale Rocks on Stainmoor. 



It is in contemplation, I understand, to make use of the enormous 

 quantities of fireclay, or seggar clay, as it is called out Northumber- 

 land way, for the manufacture of some descriptions of pottery — a 

 use that it is said to be well adapted for. When that is done we, 

 as geologists, shall have a capital opportunity of collecting some of 

 the very beautiful plant remains that these rocks are, in places, 

 almost crowded with. 



The geological interest attaching to this discovery is undoubtedly 

 very great, for more reasons than one. In the first place, the 

 existence of beds so high up in the Carboniferous series within a {qw 

 miles of a place where the lowest member of the New Red lies on 

 beds low down in the Mountain Limestone, points in a manner 

 that is unmistakeable to the enormous amount of disturbance and 

 subsequent denudation the Carboniferous Rocks here, as elsewhere, 

 had undergone before the lowest member of the Neozoic Rocks 

 began to be deposited — a thickness of rock implying a chrono- 

 logical break nearly as great as that famous unconformity we can 

 boast of in Edenside between the Carboniferous strata and the 

 rocks of the Lake District. (In all probability geologists will one 

 day fully realise the importance of this great break, and will take 

 the base of the Neozoic Series at the base of our New Red, 

 instead of at an imaginary line nmning through the middle of that 

 series.) 



Another point of importance impressed upon our minds by the 

 occurrence of this tiny patch of Coal Measures at the head of our 

 valley is the enormous amount of denudation the mountain tract 

 that bounds Edenside on the east and the north-east, as well as 

 the Lake District area itself, must have undergone. If the 

 equivalents of all the beds observable in the coal area were 

 replaced in their original position on these great uplands, we 

 should have Cross Fell, for example, well on to five thousand feet 

 above the level of the sea, instead of at its present elevation. All 

 that additional thickness of rock, and, so far as we know, much 



