110 Rev. J. Clifton Ward — Geology of the Lake District. 



also wanting, unless we regard the presence of large boulders at 

 high levels, as the diallage blocks of Crousa Down for instance, as 

 the unremovable debris of an old glacier system, and ascribe the 

 presence of large boulders, at some distance from their parent rocks, 

 in river gravels, to the relics of moraine, carried down to successively 

 lower levels in the excavation or deepening of the present lines of 

 drainage. However, if, as I agree with Mr. Godwin- Ansten in 

 thinking (op. cit.), the land stood at a much greater elevation during 

 the Glacial epoch, a great and constant snowfall may have given 

 rise to local glacier systems ; and as the present area of the 

 county would offer little more than the generative sources of the 

 (imaginary) glaciers, all traces of pre-existent deposits and of 

 moraine matter, except very large boulders, would be swept down 

 by the flood waters of the succeeding period of subsidence to levels 

 now submerged. But as all such glacial theories are purely 

 hypothetical, it behoves one to fall back on the probability that 

 Cornwall, during the Glacial epoch, stood at a much greater 

 elevation, and that its highlands were crowned with constant snows, 

 the melting of which during the succeeding amelioration, accom- 

 panied by subsidence, caused the liberation of great quantities of 

 surface water with torrential power carrying off the pre-existing 

 detritus to lower lands, now submerged. 



(To be continued in our next Number.) 



I beg leave to correct the following errata in Part I. of my paper. On p. 30, 

 line 40, for " 10 to 20" read " 10 to 12;" on p. 34, line 20, for " b.c. 400" read 

 "b.c. 440," and for "enacts" read " iovo-as,'' also for " j/7]cras" read " v-qaovs; " 

 and on p. 79, line I, for " on " read " or." — W. A. E. U. 



III. — On the Physical History of the English Lake District. 

 With Notes on the Possible Subdivisions of the Skiddaw 

 Slates. 1 



By the Eev. J. Clifton "Ward, F.G.S., F.E.M.S. 

 Post- Carboniferous Periods. 



As the Carboniferous rocks form a framework around the Silurian 

 mountain country, so do the Permian rocks for considerable 

 distances lie as an outer flat and bevelled edge to the slightly raised 

 Carboniferous frame, the edge indeed overlapping the frame itself 

 along the west coast-line between St. Bee's Head and the Duddon 

 Estuary. 



It is not purposed to give a detailed description of any Post- 

 Carboniferous formations lying outside the mountain district. The 

 two thick Permian sandstones (the Penrith and St. Bees), separated 

 by a set of shales and marls, are believed by some to indicate the 

 conditions of an inland sea, and the formation in some parts of its 

 English development to suggest cold or glacial conditions. How- 

 ever this may be, it seems more than probable that during the whole 

 of the Permian Period the present Lake District was dry land, and 

 undergoing that subaerial waste which, long continued, was to give 

 1 Concluded from the February Number, p. 61. 



