70 THE RIDGWAY FAULT. 



and press the beds beneath into all kinds of anomalous positions, 

 like those of the floors of coal mines, termed by miners creeps." 

 The Ridgway Fault has evidently played a conspicuous part in the 

 production of the present landscape of the district, and this is 

 rather exceptional. It appears from observations that faults seldom 

 influence the present contour of the land's surface to any large 

 extent, though we might have naturally assumed the contrary. 

 Mr. Mellard Reade quotes the Great Craven Fault as one of the 

 few instances in Great Britain where this is the case. " Here," he 

 says, "in Giggleswich Scar, we have on one side mountain lime- 

 stone of several hundred feet in height, forming what I would call 

 a fault escarpment, worn back by denudation to so small an extent 

 that the great fault cuts the foot of the scar, and in the valley we 

 have millstone grit lying against the limestone." (See " Origin of 

 Mountain Ranges," p. 80). "As a rule," he continues, "the sides 

 of a fault are planed down so as to obliterate the fault as a feature 

 of the scenery." This leads him to conclude that, compared with 

 the numerous dislocations of the carboniferous strata, the Craven 

 Fault is of modern date. This gives additional interest to the 

 Ridgway Fault. 



