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that flow into the vale of Pickering? Have these channels also been 

 excavated by the streams? Or how shall we account for another 

 singular fact, that the becks or rivulets which flow southwai'd from 

 the highest range of the alum hills, on arriving at the oolite hills, pass 

 directly through them, instead of turning into the valley that runs 

 along their northern fronts? Had a river run in that valley, all these 

 becks would have fallen into it, and pursued their course with it to 

 the ocean, without breaking through the oolite hills at all; or, at the 

 most, one passage through these hills would have served for the 

 whole. When, therefore, we see each of these becks holding a 

 straight course through an opening in the oolite hills, exactly oppo- 

 site its channel in the alum hills, there is no way of explaining the 

 phenomenon but by supposing, that both parts of its channel have 

 been formed by the same break in the strata. 



Another proof that river courses have been produced by such 

 breaks and denudations, we find in those places where the heads of 

 two opposite valleys run into one ; their heads forming a low marsh, 

 from whence the waters flow in contrary directions. Thus, Newton 

 Dale is connected with the vale of Godeland by a narrow marshy 

 vale or hollow, above a mile long, called the Fen. This fen, in which 

 the waters are stagnant, has the same kind of high banks as the dales 

 which it unites, and of which it is obviously the continuation. Now, 

 if we could suppose, that the beck of Newton Dale has cut its channel, 

 a supposition highly improbable, the channel being extremely deep, 

 and carried through thick beds of crow-stone and other hard rocks ; 

 the question would remain to be solved, What hollowed out the fen? 

 It is clear, that the formation of the fen, and of the dales which it 

 unites, must be attributed to one great break, passing from the vale of 

 Pickering into that of the Esk. An instance of the same kind occurs 

 in the two opposite vales of Commondale and Kildale ; which form 

 but one long narrow valley, connecting the vale of the Esk with the 



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