in the District of' the Lakes. 259 



cord with my ideas to apply the term slate to the rocks not pos- 

 sessing the laminar or slaty structure. Leaving the terms trap, 

 basalt, grey-vvacke, greenstone, whinstone, ragstone, &c. to 

 those more conversant in their application; I shall for the pre- 

 sent content myself with such distinctive characters as first arrest 

 the attention of an untutored observer,and these are the colour and 

 fracture. With the exception of some reddish granite, or sienitic 

 rocks, at Muncaster, Irton, Eskdale, Buttermere, Shap Fells, &c. 

 a porphyritic rook near Keswick, and some others, they are ge- 

 nerally of a pale bluish-grey colour. The mountains of Eskdale, 

 Wasdale, Borrowdale, Langdale, Grasmere, Patterdale, Martin- 

 dale, Mardale, &c. including the highest mountains Scawfell and 

 Helvellyn, as well as the Old Man at Coniston, are in this divi- 

 sion. The fine pale-blue roofing slate occurs in beds (called by 

 the workmen veins); the most natural position of the folia or 

 ieavage of the slate seems to be vertical ; but it is found in va- 

 rious degrees of inclination, both with respect to the horizon, 

 and the planes of stratification. In Borrowdale the upper part 

 of the slate inclines to the north, in Langdale to the south ; as 

 though the mountain ridge, dividing the counties of Cumberland 

 and Westmorland, had acted as a wedge in separating them. 



Most of the rocks of this division effervesce in some degree 

 with acids, but more especially those possessing the slatv struc- 

 ture ; they contain some calcareous spar in veins and nodules ; 

 some lead ore at Patterdale; a copper mine at Daieliead in New- 

 Jands near the nortliern extremity, produces some rare varieties 

 of ore: copper is also got at Coniston, near the southern boundary 

 of the division ; several small veins of iron-ore appear, i)ut none 

 thought worth the expense of working ; the famous plumbago 

 or black-lead mine of Borrowdale, is also contained in this di- 

 vision : it occurs not in a regular vein, but in isolated sops, or 

 pipes, which appear to be formed by the intersection of cross 

 veins. 



The third division, forming only inferior elevations, commences 

 with a bed (erroneously called a vein) of a dark-blue limestone, 

 {the transition limestone of some geologists,) intermixed with a 

 slaty rock of the same colour: this is the first stratum in vvhich 

 I have recognised any organic remains of shells, &c. It crosses 

 the river Uuddon near Broughton, stretches in a north-east di- 

 rection by the foot of the Old Man mountain, crosses the head 

 of Windermere Lake, near the Low Wood Inn, and proceeds 

 through the valleys of Troutbeck, Kentmcre, &c. It is succeeded 

 on the south-east by a seriesof rocks of the same dark- blue colour; 

 from some of which, as at Brathay, excellent flags for flooring, as 

 well as for tombstones, &;c. are procured. Large (|nantitics of 

 dark coloured roofing slate (called black slate, to distinguish it 



K k 2 from 



