SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS 139 



Chain, the site of the Lake District appears to have 

 been upraised as a dome-shaped eminence, the summit 

 of which lay over the tract now occupied by the 

 heights from Scafell to Helvellyn. The earliest rain 

 that fell upon this eminence would gather into diver- 

 gent streams from the central watershed. In the 

 course of ages, after possibly repeated uplifts, these 

 streams have cut down into the underlying core of 

 old Palaeozoic rocks, retaining on the whole their 

 original trend. Meanwhile the whole of the over- 

 lying mantle of later formations has been stripped 

 from the dome, and is now found only along the 

 borders of the mountains. The older rocks, partly 

 faulted down and yielding to erosion, each in its own 

 way, have gradually assumed that picturesqueness of 

 detail for which the area is so deservedly famous. 



The Scottish Highlands likewise received their initial 

 plications during older Palaeozoic time, their com- 

 ponent rocks having been thrown into sharp folds 

 trending in a general north-east and south-west 

 direction. 1 But there is reason to believe that they 

 were subsequently in large measure buried under Old 

 Red Sandstone, and possibly under later accumulations. 

 No positive evidence exists as to the condition of this 

 region during the vast interval between the Old Red 

 Sandstone and the older Secondary rocks. We can 

 hardly believe it to have remained as land during all 



1 Since these lectures were given the remarkably complex structure 

 of the North-West Highlands has been made known. It has been 

 ascertained that gigantic horizontal displacements of rock have 

 occurred in that region, and that similar ' thrusts ' have more or less 

 affected the rest of the Highlands. 



