CONFIGURATION, SOIL AND CLIMATE. 61 



change so rapidly that it would lead too far to give a detailed 

 account of them in this place, but a few notes will not be out of 



section i— configuration. soil and climate 



1. Geological Features. 



The northern, western and south-western parts of Great 

 Britain are mountainous or hilly and composed of hard primary 

 or metamorphic rocks, while the centre and south of England are 

 undulating in character and built up of soft secondary, tertiary 

 and quaternary strata. In the latter areas are two belts of 

 Jurassic Umestone running from the Cliveland Hills in Yorkshire 

 to the Dorset coast, and more or less parallel with them run beds 

 of chalk. The latter enclose three basins known as the London, 

 the Weald and Hampshire basins. Considerable areas of sandy 

 heath exist here, partly covered with pine woods in the Hampshire 

 basin and in parts of the London basin ; the Weald is heavy clay. 

 The south-west of England consists chiefly of Devonian and 

 carboniferous shales and grit with an area of granite on Dartmoor. 

 The Midland plain in the centre of England is shut in on the west 

 by the Welsh hills and broken up on the north by the Pennine 

 Chain, which forms the backbone of England from Derbyshire to 

 the Scottish border. The Pennines are composed of carboniferous 

 rocks flanked on the west by the rugged Lake district. They rise 

 to an elevation of 2,892 feet. The highest point in the Lake 

 district rises to 3,210 feet. 



The hill country in the south of Wales has the carboniferous 

 series of the South Wales coal fields, which are succeeded to the 

 north by old red sandstone ; further north are silurian, ordovician 

 and Cambrian rocks culminating in Snowdon with an elevation of 

 3,560 feet above the sea. 



In Scotland, the border district and the country to the north 

 of it are known as the Southern Uplands, the rocks being mainly 

 silurian and ordovician shales and grits with igneous rocks, the 

 mountains rising to more than 2,000 feet. The central lowlands 

 stretch from the Firth of Forth on the east to the Firth of Clyde 

 on the west, and include rocks of carboniferous age and igneous 

 rocks of various ages. They are succeeded on the north by a 

 broad band of old red sandstone. 



