The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
265 
point of the ran^^e which has been called the backbone of 
England, and which passes through Derbyshire, Lancashire, 
and Yorkshire to the Scottish boundary. This abrupt terminal 
point, 1200 feet above the level of the sea, forms a conspicuous 
object from the wide plain of Staffordshire, which it overlooks. 
The rounded outline of the hills is seen in the distance from the 
farthest limits of the county, and is frequently the picturesque 
termination to a landscape composed of undulating pastures, 
which would be monotonous but for this distant fringe. 
The country lying between the mountain limestone and the 
Pottery coal measures consists of Yoredale rocks and grits. In 
the paper already referred to, the Yoredale rocks are described 
as consisting of thick coarse sandstone beds, thin limestones, 
and quartzites. The latter have generally a firm close grain, and 
a plentiful siliceous cement ; they do not crumble by exposure 
like the millstone grits ; the fracture is clean and bright, while 
the freshly broken surface of the gritstone is rough. On Gun 
Hill, near Leek, these beds are very hard subcrystalline quartz 
rocks. Some of the beds have a calcareous cement. The lime- 
stone shales, forming the lower division of the Yoredale rocks, 
vary from black earthy beds to pure crystalline limestones con- 
taining many fossils. The Yoredale beds cover the whole of 
the country west of Longnor up to the edge of the Goyt 
Trough. They are much tossed about and broken by faults, 
but the three groups can be made out. The Yoredale quartzites 
are well shown on Lady Edge and the neighbouring hills, and 
the bottom shales and limestones will be found in many of the 
brook-courses along the deeper valleys. Farther to the west the 
Yoredale quartzites rise to the summit of Gun Hill, when they 
roll over and plunge sharply down to the west until they abut 
against an anticlinal fault. Beyond this anticlinal fault is the 
Rudyard Basin, lying between it and another break about a couple 
of miles to the west. Then follows another sharp saddle formed 
by the \ oredale quartzites, and beyond this the Biddulph 
Trough, containing here the lower coal measures, bounded 
by bold ridges of the millstone grit, which form Cloud Hill, and 
extending to Mow Cop on the west, and to Knypersley and towards 
Bagnall on the east. The millstone grit scenery is marked by 
long lines of terraced or steeply scarped hills, contrasting with 
the rounded edges of the limestone hills. The same kind of 
outline is continually seen in the gently rising surface of moor- 
land broken off along a sharp line of cliff. The summits of the 
ridges are invariably composed of grit or sandstone, the flanks of 
the hills and the valleys of shale. The steep face of the escarp- 
ment always tends to run in the line of strike, and looks in the 
direction opposite to the dip ; so the observer can often trace the 
