GEOLOGY 
Upper Old Red Sandstone commenced an important change in the 
order of things. From being part of a great continental upland, far 
from the sea, with a small and irregular rainfall, and with but scanty 
traces of life, it gradually passed to conditions in all essential respects 
almost the very opposite. The change was brought about, first, by a 
cessation of the repeated upheavals of the land, which had previously 
gone on so long a time, and then to an equally slow and gradual 
movement in the opposite direction. As the land quietly subsided the 
sea, which was distant at the outset, gradually advanced nearer and 
nearer. With closer proximity to the sea, the rainfall became more 
regular, and the former extremes of temperature were gradually miti- 
gated. Finally, the climate passed from one of a continental type to the 
type usually found under insular conditions. With the advent of condi- 
tions more favourable to life, a varied and abundant vegetation began to 
spring up, and animal life on the land, so scarce during the former 
period, now immigrated in great force ; and its growth advanced by 
leaps and bounds. The transition phases in climate are marked by a 
series of deposits which English geologists term the Lower Limestone 
Shale, which in Ireland form part of the Carboniferous Slate, and 
which the geologists of Scotland know as the Ballagan Beds. The 
general character of these rocks is very uniform, wherever they occur 
throughout the kingdom. They are very imperfectly developed on the 
margin of the Lake district near Penruddock, but are much better seen 
at several places in Westmorland, notably at Shap Summit. They also 
occur in the north-east of the county, and are traceable at Melmerby. 
In general terms they may be said to consist of old beds of clay, silt and 
sand, which were deposited mainly in sea water, in shallow lagoons and 
in deltas, at a time when the subsidence of the land first gave admittance 
to the sea, and just when the climate was changing from the arid condi- 
tion of Old Red times to the humid climate that succeeded, or from 
a continental climate to one that was insular. 
The general behaviour of these old sediments where they are 
studied over a large area, shows that their materials have been trans- 
ported in the main in a south-easterly direction. We may conclude 
from that fact that the old land from whose waste they were derived lay 
somewhere to the north-west. 
The deposition of the Upper Old Red Sandstone had not by any 
means quite levelled up all the inequalities of the surface. One of the 
larger ridges thus left can easily be made out still. It ranged in a 
nearly east and west direction through Cumberland, passing through 
Whitehaven, the south side of Ullswater, Penrith, below Cross Fell, 
past the High Force in Teesdale, beyond which point the evidence 
fails. 
(4) After a time, as the land slowly sank, the sea advanced farther 
and farther northward, and Cumberland subsided at a sufficiently rapid 
rate to allow of the extension of fairly deep and quite clear sea water 
over the greater part of the area. After that stage had been reached 
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