Vol. 62.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xcili 



horizontal, but runs, on the whole, at higher elevations on the north 

 and north-east than on the south and west. If denudation were to 

 cut back the junction until it were everywhere at a uniform height 

 above sea-level, the rim would lie farther north and north-east 

 than it does at present, although no very profound change in the 

 outcrop of the line of junction would be thus produced. 



The symmetry is more apparent on the map than in reality. 

 Generally speaking, the ground rises as we approach the imagined 

 centre of uplift ; but there are exceptions, the principal being the 

 masses of high ground around Skiddaw north of the centre, and 

 Helvellyn north-east of it. The Skiddaw elevation suggests a sub- 

 sidiary dome, a point which will be considered when the drainage 

 is described ; while the Helvellyn elevation could be accounted for 

 as the result of later movement along the old line of fracture through 

 Grasmere and Thirlmere (which has been previously described), or it 

 may be simply due to the fact that, geologically, the dome is not 

 one which could be circumscribed by a circle, but, as maintained by 

 Hopkins, is rather of the nature of an ellipse, of which the major 

 axis would run through the Helvellyn mass. 



Another departure from symmetry is noticeable south of the 

 dome. Prom Millom around the northern margin, and thence as far 

 south as Tebay, the line of junction between the Lower Palaeozoic 

 and the later rocks is comparatively regular ; but at the southern 

 end, between Kendal and Millom, the Carboniferous rocks are let 

 down against the Lower Palaeozoic in great wedges, the apices 

 of which point on the whole northward. That these wedges are 

 partly due to early faulting is manifest, but subsequent movement 

 has possibly affected them. Their importance to us consists in the 

 determination of a series of estuaries along the tracts occupied by 

 the newer rocks, namely, those of the Kent and Gilpin, the Winster, 

 the Leven, and the Duddon. 



The uplift which gave rise to the Lake District did not, then, 

 produce a simple symmetrical dome, but one main dome of a 

 slightly-elliptical form, or rather, I would say, a form approaching 

 that of a short-handled spoon, like an old 'caddy-spoon,' with the 

 handle to the east ; a subsidiary dome occupying the site of the 

 Howgill and Kirkby-Lonsdale Fells and the fells to the east of 

 these ; and perhaps a minor and more symmetrical dome in the 

 Skiddaw tract. 



Such dome-clusters are found among the plateaux of the Colorado 



