J. E. Marr—Drainage of the English Lakes. 151 
influence which the faults have had in determining the trend of the 
major valleys is however of little importance to my present inquiry. 
§ 1.—Structure of the District. 
The well-known general structure of the district is seen in the 
sketch-map, which exhibits the Lower Paleozoic rocks nearly 
surrounded on every side by a girdle of Carboniferous Limestone, 
the strike of which is always approximately parallel to the line of 
demarcation between the older and newer rocks, the former rising 
up as an irregular dome within the latter. Whereas the main axis 
of the older rocks within the district runs through the Skiddaw group 
of hills, the present watershed is marked by an east and west line 
running through the Scawfell group across Kirkstone, and the passes 
at the heads of the Kentmere and Long Sleddale valleys to Shap 
Wells, whence it is continued in an easterly direction over ground 
occupied by Carboniferous rocks, separating the head-waters of the 
rivers Eden and Lune. 
§ 2.—Condition of the area at the commencement of Carboniferous times. 
Mr. Hopkins pointed out that the dip of the Carboniferous rocks 
was everywhere sufficient to carry them far above the present surface 
of the older rocks in the central part of the district, and he gives 
cogent reasons for supposing that they actually did so extend. As it 
is of the utmost importance that this point should be definitely 
settled, I propose here to give further arguments in favour of the 
submergence of the whole of the Lower Paleozoic area during 
Carboniferous times, and to show that the present drainage was 
certainly not impressed upon the district in pre-Carboniferous days. 
The very uniform plain of denudation upon which the Carboniferous 
rocks were laid down in the Ingleborough region is well known, but 
those who maintain the existence of a pre-Carboniferous ridge over 
the area of the present Lake District require the cessation of this 
plain towards the west. But MM. de Koninck and Lohest' show that 
the Lower Carboniferous beds of Belgium are represented by the 
conglomerate of the Ingleborough district, and it is probable that 
beds quite as low occur in the immediate proximity of the Lake 
District, though this point will be definitely settled when Mr. H. J. 
Garwood, B.A., who is now engaged in a detailed examination of 
the Carbonifeous zones of the region has published his researches. 
If the Lake District area had stood out as an elevation at this period, 
the equivalents of the lowest strata of Ingleborough should he 
absent here. Not only does the Mountain Limestone form a nearly 
complete ring round the lakes, but at one point where the ring is 
broken by the complex group of faults uniting the Craven and 
Pennine fractures, great masses of the limestone are let down into 
the dome, as at Grey Rigg and Kendal, indicating that the limestone 
at any rate extended thus far. 
Again, the folding of the Lower Paleozoic rocks would not give 
1 Notice sur le Parellélisme entre le calcaire Carbonifére du nord-ouest de 
lAngleterre et celui de la Belgique, Bulletins de ]’Académie royale de Belgique, 
3me. série, t. xi. no. 6. 
