Plains. 333 



and the Carboniferous grits, 5, lies the Carboniferous 

 Limestone between two faults in a broken country. Then 

 comes a marked feature in the district, consisting of the 

 long, gently sloping beds of Yoredale rocks and Millstone 

 Grit, No. 5, dipping easterly till they slip out of sight 

 beneath the Magnesian Limestone, No. 6, overlaid in 

 succession by New Eed beds and Lias plains, 7 and 8, 

 which are overlooked by an escarpment of Chalk, 9. 

 This Chalk is overlaid by Boulder-clay, the eastern edge 

 of which forms a cliff overlooking the sea. 



North of this region, till we come to the east side of 

 the Vale of Eden, the country is much complicated by 

 faults and other disturbances, and to describe it in 

 detail would occupy much space, but east of the 

 Vale of Eden the structure of the country is again 

 exceedingly simple, the whole of the Carboniferous rocks 

 dipping steadily east at low angles, all the way from 

 the escarpment that overlooks the vale, to the Grerman 

 Ocean that borders the Northumberland coal-field, fig. 

 69, p. 334. 



While travelling northward from London by the 

 Great Northern Railway, many persons must be struck 

 with the general flatness of the country after passing 

 the Cretaceous escarpments north of Hitchin. Before 

 reaching Peterborough the line enters on the great 

 peaty and alluvial flats of Cambridgeshire, Lincoln- 

 shire, and the Wash, a vast plain, and once a great 

 bay, formed by the denudation of the Kimeridge and 

 Oxford Clays. It has been for long the recipient 

 of the mud of several rivers the Ouse, the Nen, the 

 Welland, the Witham, and the Grlen. Nature and art 

 have combined, by silting and by dykes, to turn the flat 

 into a miniature Holland, about 70 miles in length and 

 36 in width. Near Stamford, passing through the low, 

 flat-topped undulations of the Oolitic and Lias, with 



