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merits of such a piece of work as this, that there was, up to that 

 time, very few records of the position of the parts of the district 

 where the best natural exposures were laid bare. It was therefore 

 necessary to make a series of traverses in every likely direction and 

 to carefully record all the facts disclosed by those sections. This 

 alone entailed a great deal of bodily labour, not to be got through 

 in the course of a few days or a few weeks, as would suffice for the 

 examination of such sections when their localities are already placed 

 on record. Then there was the by-no-means easy task of collating 

 the various sections and noting their points of agreement and of 

 difference. Then arose questions regarding the relations of these 

 rocks to rocks of similar age in other parts of England, or of 

 Europe, all involving a considerable amount of research, com- 

 parison of sections, collecting and examining fossils, and work of 

 that kind. The results of these observations were recorded on a 

 large map (nothing like so good a map topographically as are 

 within the reach of all of us now). This map, still in the possession 

 of Mrs. Pearson, is one that I have ever regarded with a peculiar 

 interest, because it is undoubtedly the earliest essay at making a large 

 scale geological map of our district that had yet been attempted. 

 Moreover, my own official duties have led me to map, in even a 

 more highly-detailed manner, a large part of the area represented 

 by that map ; and although here and there I have been led to put 

 a slightly-different construction upon some of the facts he has 

 recorded, I can bear the fullest testimony to its accuracy as a 

 whole. The results of his observations were summed up in a 

 paper published in Vol. xviii. of the Quart. Journ. of the Geological 

 Society. Thenceforward there was little else of the Geology of the 

 Red Rocks of Edenside left to work out than the minor details of 

 structure, and some few points of a more or less theoretical 

 character. 



The next year appeared a paper on the Skiddaw Slate series, 

 which was accompanied by some notes on the fossils by Mr. 

 Salter. Like the paper last referred to, this formed an important 

 contribution to the literature of a group of rocks whose exact 

 geological position has always presented great difficulties to the 



