IN NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE. 155 



terms, I should be inclined to say that the reason why 

 there are no waterfalls in North Staffordshire is because 

 there are no alternating beds of trap or other hard rocks 

 to interfere with the gradual descent of streams from the 

 hills. I must, however, not be misunderstood. I do not 

 say that rocks of a decidedly varying composition are 

 essential in all cases to produce waterfalls. They may 

 be caused by dislocations, by faults and joints in beds of 

 the same lithological character, severing their continuity. 

 Still, I believe those instances are exceptional. Joints and 

 faults often er serve as apertures through or down which 

 streams flow, than to cause falls. These rents have, as 

 it were, anticipated or saved the mechanical action of the 

 water itself. These latter remarks seem to apply to the 

 absence of waterfalls from that part of North Staffordshire 

 where the substratum is not millstone grit, but mountain 

 limestone. That formation, as Mr. Garner in his Natural 

 History of Staffordshire has more than once observed, is 

 full of extensive fissures and cracks, through which, as we 

 know, the water often flows beneath the surface, as in 

 the case of the Manifold and Hamps streams. In South 

 Wales there are waterfalls under as well as above ground 

 in the rivers and streams passing through this limestone. 

 Again : there are some waterfalls that do not appear on 

 a first inspection to illustrate the operation of any of the 

 general laws above mentioned. I will refer to two instances. 

 In Scale Force, the well known fall in Cumberland, the 

 water has evidently sawn its vertical way into the 

 horizontally-bedded hill side, at right angles with the main 

 valley. The less known fall in South Wales, bearing the 

 quaint name of " Water-break-its-neck," has apparently 

 also sawn or eaten itself through horizontal Upper Silurian 

 beds. Their history appears to be this : the valley into 

 which the streams flow having been excavated by water 



