24 Hugh Miller — Escarpments and Terraces, 



escarpments, wliich, as illustrating the phenomena attending their 

 development, is probably unsurpassed in the kingdom. The solid 

 Mountain Limestone of the South of England — in Yorkshire divided 

 up by intercalated bands of shale and grit, among which the lime- 

 stones project in terraced outcrops — is here represented by beds 

 seldom exceeding 30 feet in thickness, and, speaking generally, 

 averaging scarcely 15. The sandstones, on the other hand, which 

 take in Yorkshire the subordinate place, have become thickened and 

 often massive, while the shales are similarly augmented. The out- 

 crop of these beds of sandstone, limestone, and shale, forms a 

 marked system of roughly parallel ridges and furrows crossing the 

 watershed of the country from W.S.W. to E.N.E. The long-drawn 

 hollows between projectiug lines of outcrop are occupied mainly by 

 shale, serving as an offset to the outstanding beds. The sandstones 

 rise into the more prominent ridges, yet conform neither at base nor 

 summit to horizontal lines, a consequence, in part, of their varying 

 bedding and texture : here, where massive, advancing and rising along 

 the line of a dip moderate in amount, until terminated in a precipitous 

 front ; there, withdrawing with bay-like recesses, whose inner sloping 

 margin represents the subsided escarpment, or sinking temporarily 

 until no feature marks their site. The limestone features are of 

 subordinate character, generally rising into an angular wave, whose 

 shortened front is roughened into an incipient crest, or entering into 

 the profile of the talus-like skirt of a sandstone cliff as a somewhat 

 subdued ledge or boss. 



Dominating the features of the district, the igTieous Whinsill, 

 simulating an interbedded appearance, and showing, like the other 

 escarpments, dip-slope and scarp, runs like a great black carina 

 among minor enflanking ribs. 



This system of ridges with intermediate furrows, although differ- 

 ing in appearance from the terraces of the Yorkshire Dales, would, 

 notwithstanding, assume a terraced character if ranged along the 

 sides of a valley. This fact is sufficiently exemplified in the neigh- 

 bourhood. In the wide valley through which the Houxtj'' Burn 

 joins the North Tyne, the sandstones, masked as they are by super- 

 ficial deposits, and only partly favoured by dip, yet crop out occasion- 

 ally in the form of wall-faced esplanades ; one marked instance 

 resembling in no remote degree the well-known Leyburn Shawl of 

 Wensleydale. "We have here also a gradation between the terraced 

 and the ridged form ; a gradation doubtless to be met with in many 

 places intermediate between Yorkshire and Northumberland. 



If the identity of the phenomena in the two counties be granted, 

 as I think it must, the same causes must be looked to for their expla- 

 nation. Two theories, rejected by Mr. Goodchild for the Yorkshire 

 terraces, are still less applicable to the features here described. It 

 is impossible that either rivers or the sea should carve out a 

 parallel series of furrows coinciding with soft beds, and of ridges 

 formed by harder ones. And when the series bears relation not to 

 any water-level or levels, but to the grander features of the country, 

 upon which it is chiselled as merely, so to speak, the minor orna- 



