THE ORIGIN OF MOUNTAINS. 33 



Westward we have a peep of the tiny mountain group of Charnwood 

 Forest, with its slaty rocks and syenitic granites at Mount Sorrel. 

 Brickyards and pasture land characterise much of the Lias. 



And then we enter upon the Oolites at Ketton and Stamford, where 

 the fine yellow freestone again gives a feature to the country iu more 

 hilly ground, forming often a rich agricultural land, marked by 

 occasional stone walls, while the churches and houses testify to its use 

 as a building material. From Peterborough to Brandon, we have 

 little to diversify the scenery, for a monotonous level of fenland is 

 crossed. The works of man in draining and top-dressing have resulted 

 in good crops of corn ; but much of the land is still moory, as the 

 black banks of the numerous ditches tell us. Brandon shows us 

 sections of the Chalk, andthence this is mostly obscured by coverings 

 of drift gravel and boulder clay, until we reach the city of Norwich, 

 with its cliffs of Chalk and Crag and Glacial beds. 



Hence we have traversed the Cambrian, Silurian, Carboniferous, 

 New Red, Lias, Oolitic, Cretaceous, Later Tertiary, and Quaternary 

 deposits. 



From the old to the new, from the hard to the soft, we hav passed 

 stage by stage ; and from the elevated tracts of the Lake District, we 

 have come to the levels of the Fenland and the alluvial marshes of the 

 Yare. From some of the earliest records of geological history we 

 reach the causes now in action and the deposits of our existing rivers, 

 and they insensibly lead us to the sea, where much of the sediment 

 they denude is outspread. 



A consideration of all the facts we have noticed suggests the idea 

 that our present oceanic deposits are perhaps the first stages of some 

 future mountain group, and we attempt to carry on the chain of 

 thought in the future as we can trace it back roughly in the past. 



Insignificant as may be our mountains when compared in height 

 with others that reach nearly ten times their elevation, there is, 

 nevertheless, no tract in the world which can boast greater diversity of 

 surface in a similar area than our own country. And I think most of 

 us feel that each kind of scenery has its own peculiar charm. 



It may sometimes happen that descriptions of the scenery of tracts 

 with which we are very familiar appear to us too highly coloured — 

 while, on the other hand, a visit to a new district often conveys 

 an exaggerated sense of its beauty or grandeur, which may disappear 

 as we familiarise ourselves with the country. 



Thus our Norfolk cliffs have been described as " dreadful heights," 

 as " stupendous and amazing precipices," as a "long chain of moun- 

 tainous cliffs ;" and I remember reading in tbe tour of a foreigner in 

 England such a description of the scenery viewed from a hill in Essex, 

 about 300 feet in height, as I should hesitate to apply to a Devonshire 

 landscape. As I have heard a friend say, it was a scene where no 

 mountains obstructed the view ! My first impressions of the Malvern 

 Hills (which is a tiny and geologically very ancient mountain range) 

 far exceeded my expectations as I stretched out of the window 



