A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
things continued for many thousands of years ; the snowfall, however, 
gradually increasing, and thereby chilling the air around, and perennial 
snow covering an increasingly larger area on the uplands, fogs becoming 
more and more prevalent, and less and less rain falling even in the 
summer months. ‘These various causes tending to lower the tempera- 
ture produced cumulative effects. 
Long prior to the time when the snow began to lie all the year 
round on the lowlands, Cumberland was still inhabited, especially during 
the summer months, by many of the large mammalia of those days which 
migrated thus far from the south-east in quest of the extensive feeding 
grounds they required. With the great herbivorous beasts came also 
some of the carnivora, amongst them the ancestor of the African lion, 
whose shaggy mane and breast may be a vestige of the thick rough coat 
of spotted fur which enabled him to fare well in a cold climate. With 
these and other carnivorous animals it is not unlikely that savage man 
may also have first visited these parts, and have already begun to use his 
rough stone implements in contending with the other denizens of the 
land for the possession of the hunting grounds. 
(d) Slowly and gradually the snow spread to the lowlands. Glaciers 
in the north-west of Scotland had already coalesced to such an extent as 
to cover the whole country there. As time went on these conditions 
began to prevail further south ; the areas first to be so affected being 
those which are characterized by the heaviest rainfall at the present 
day. Before the advancing ice the plants and animals not yet accus- 
tomed to cold conditions had either to migrate southward or to suffer 
extermination. As they disappeared, others of more boreal habits took 
their place, and advanced southward in proportion as the land became 
uninhabitable. So reindeer and arctic animals and plants eventually 
migrated as far south as central France. It must be remembered that 
these migrations were facilitated by the land connection that then existed 
between Britain and the continent by way of what are now the North 
Sea and the English Channel. 
Eventually more snow fell even on the lowlands of Cumberland 
than the summer’s heat sufficed to melt, and then glacial conditions 
may be said to have set in there, just as they had done long before in 
the country to the north. The glaciers grew, then coalesced, and 
eventually crept outward from their mountain birthplace to the low 
ground beyond. These conditions must have remained for a very long 
period, if we may judge by the effects produced upon the rock surfaces 
and by the enormous quantities of rock material transported outward 
from the mountain centres to the low ground beyond. 
(e) In a county like Cumberland, in which so much interest centres 
upon the lakes and the mountain features, the phase under consideration 
is one of great importance. There can be no question whatever, 
amongst field geologists at any rate, that all the lake basins of Cumberland 
were carved out of the solid rock at this time by the long-continued 
action of thick masses of glacier ice. ‘There is really but little need to 
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