EAST AND WEST COASTS. 121 



than the close of the Triassic age, when the central European land 

 once more disappeared. 



Mid-Britain. At this period the rocks which form the greater part 

 of South Britain were not even deposited in the ocean. They com- 

 prise the whole of the Secondary series newer than the Trias. These 

 rocks are chiefly alternations of clay and limestone running through 

 the country in a direction from north-east in Yorkshire to south-west 

 in Dorsetshire; superimposed upon them in the south-east are the 

 still newer deposits named Tertiary. If our attention be now turned 

 to the northern part of England, it will be noticed that there is a 

 great central axis called the Pennine Chain, which runs north and 

 south. This, it will be observed, consists of Carboniferous rocks. 

 Kesting upon its western side are the newer Triassic strata, upon which 

 in the south of Cheshire rests an outlying mass of the Lias. This 

 little patch of Lias, like a similar patch in the valley of the Eden, is 

 sufficient to show that that formation was once more widely spread 

 in the West of England ; while it may have been continuous with 

 other patches of Lias in the north of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides. 

 But we are more concerned with it, because it demonstrates that the 

 synclinal fold of South Cheshire was produced after the Lias had been 

 formed. But when we turn to the east of the Pennine Chain, the 

 whole of the Secondary strata, up to the Chalk, will be found in 

 sequence, all of them running north-east and south-west, and all 

 dipping to the east. This eastern dip teaches us that the Pennine 

 Chain, though originated after the Permian and before the Trias, 

 and progressing up to the Cretaceous age, was elevated finally at 

 some period more recent than the deposition of the Chalk. There- 

 fore, after the Secondary rocks had all been deposited, this part of 

 Europe continued to experience a compressing force acting from east 

 and west, which threw the strata into north and south folds. It is easy 

 to see that the outline of the country at that remote time was quite 

 different from what it is now ; indeed, if North Britain had then been 

 formed, an annual waste of the cliffs during the long subsequent ages 

 no more in amount than now goes on would have produced a percep- 

 tible effect on the outlines of the land. But between Elamborough 

 Head and the Tees it may be noticed that all the Secondary rocks, 

 instead of continuing their course to the north, bend round in the 

 Vale of Pickering and the Yorkshire moorlands, striking almost due 

 east. It is possible that this eastern bend is of newer date than the 

 north-to-south extension, but in any case it must be attributed to a resist- 

 ance in the north, such as would be created by a folded prolongation of 

 the Scottish Hills towards the Norwegian country. It might at first 

 sight be supposed that the narrow form of the north of England is due to 

 this east-to-west squeezing, but an examination of a geological map will 

 be enough to show us that although there were formed at this time 

 several subordinate parallel folds in the north of Wales, yet that the adja- 

 cent coasts of Wales and Ireland form an anticlinal, which excludes the 

 possibility of the Irish Sea having originated in a compression which de- 

 pressed that region in the same manner as the North Sea was depressed. 



