508 J. W. Bans— The Valley of the Calder. 



stices between the grains of sand full of water. The water gradually 

 settles or filters to the lower part of the sandstone, and, reaching the 

 base, it meets with the shales, and its progress is stopped in that 

 direction — perhaps not entirely, but nearly so. If the sandstone 

 occupies a hollow, it fills up until the lowest part of the shaly 

 rim be reached, when the water bubbles out as a spring. If, as 

 is usually the case in our district, the beds are inclined at a tolerably 

 persistent angle, the water drains to the lowest part, and is there 

 "thrown out" at the junction of the shales with the sandstone. A 

 good example of the former kind of spring occurs on Norland 

 Moor, at what are called the boiling wells, so named from the ap- 

 pearance of boiling presented by the water as it bubbles up ; and for 

 examples where the water is thrown out by an impervious bed of 

 shale, you will find many along the base of the escarpment in North 

 Dean wood. I do not think you would be very likely to find any 

 on this side of the valley, because the rock dips or slopes towards 

 Halifax, and the water would of course follow the same direction. 

 This throwing out of water proves an important element in increas- 

 ing the width of the valley, for in its passage, minute quantities 

 of the shale are carried away, and the action continuing for long 

 periods, the foundation of the grits above is loosened or removed, 

 and the masses of angular -jointed sandstone fall from their position 

 and lie strewn over the slope below. From the peculiar manner in 

 which the grit rocks are jointed, they generally break away in rect- 

 angular blocks, leaving a still perpendicular surface to be further 

 acted upon. Very fine examples where a whole hill- side has been 

 precipitated into the valley below, may be seen at " Buckstones " 

 beyond Barkisland, and also between the latter place and Eipponden. 

 The amount of debris carried away seawards by the Eiver Calder 

 is something enormous. If you were to take a glass of water from 

 the river during a flood, or freshet, when the water is muddiest, and 

 let it stand until the matter it contained had settled to the bottom, 

 it would at once be seen that it forms really a large per-centage of 

 the weight of the whole. Next calculate the millions of gallons of 

 water that pass away in a day or a year, and you will be astonished 

 to find how many tons, thousands of tons, of our everlasting lulls are 

 removed to another place, very likely some quiet corner at the 

 bottom of the German Ocean, which in ages to come will be filled up 

 and form dry land again. And so the cycle of changes in the 

 structure of the surface of the earth constantly proceeds ; nothing is 

 fixed, nothing firm ; sandstones, shales and limestones are accumu- 

 lated beneath the waves, are raised up and form dry land, are 

 subject to internal displacement, forced up into high mountains by 

 volcanic action, only to b© again ground to powder by frost, rain, 

 and wind, and carried away by the rivers to form new strata in the 

 sea-bottom. This has been going on from the beginning, and will 

 proceed to the end. 



