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



rise to the present beautiful forms of mountain and valley. If the 

 Permian were partly a cold period, then an early set of glaciers may 

 have found their home among the early Cumbrian mountains, and 

 any amount of ice-smoothing and polishing of the rocky surface 

 then produced must, to a certain degree, have hindered the work of 

 denudation for a long period afterwards. Indeed, it is more than 

 likely that tbe very large amount of denudation produced by glacial 

 means during a glacial period is more than counterbalanced by the 

 retarded action of subaerial forces working upon a generally 

 smoothed and rounded surface. In post-Permian times, when 

 extensive north and south movements and dislocations occurred (as 

 along tbe foot of Cross Fell range, and the Pennine Anticlinal), sym- 

 pathetic movements may have taken place in the mountain nucleus, 

 and very likely the majority of the N. and S. faults ranging through 

 the Silurians, and frequently shifting the previously formed E. and W. 

 ones, were produced at this period. 



As we pass in review the periods succeeding the Permian, nothing 

 more can be said with regard to the history of the Lake District 

 than that in all probability the Cumbrian centre remained an area of 

 dry land, more or less lofty, though slowly being eaten down and 

 into by the forces of denudation. Prom the mountains as tbey then 

 existed one could have looked northwards and southwards into 

 areas of water beneath which the New Red deposits were being 

 formed. Subsequently the Liassic sea with its marine monsters 

 probably skirted the mountain district at no great distance. 



Onwards in time through the Jurassic Period, with its Australian- 

 like climate, during which the Cumbrian mountains may have 

 experienced many a storm of semi-tropic violence, through the long 

 Cretaceous Epoch and Tertiary times must the District have been 

 suffering wear and tear, at times doubtless nearly or quite united to 

 the neighbouring high ground of the Pennine Eange and of Wales. 

 No wonder so much has been carried away by apparently weak sub- 

 aerial powers of denudation, rather the wonder is that the mountains 

 should have been preserved at all, instead of all being levelled to 

 the sea. This will again be commented on in following pages, when 

 the question of the numerical equivalents of periods will be dis- 

 cussed. That the District experienced many vicissitudes of climate 

 throughout this enormous length of time seems certain — now tempe- 

 rate, now semi-tropic, and now again probably glacial, and the last 

 marked geological change which it underwent was during the so- 

 called Glacial Period proper. 



Glacial Period. 



This period having been treated of in full, as regards the Lake 

 District, in my former Papers, and in much detail in the Survey 

 Memoir, chap, xiii., nothing but a mere necessary outline will be 

 now given. 



The glacial phenomena of the district are as follows : — Till, 

 mainly the product of a confluent glacier-sheet. Drift gravel, and 

 stratified sand and gravel, often occurring in the form of eskers, due 



