22 
"there is scarcely any land hitherto examined in Europe, 
" Northern Asia, or North America, which has not been raised 
" from the bosom of the deep since the origin of the car- 
boniferous rocks, or which if previously raised, has not sub- 
" sequently acquired additional altitude, and if we were to 
" submerge again all the marine strata from the most recent 
" shelly beds to the transition limestone, only the summits of 
" some primary mountains would be above the waters." 
Recent expansions and elevations of the earth' 's crust. — One of 
the best examples of the effects of a wide-spread elevation is 
the Cumberland drift, so well exhibited in the north parts of 
Yorkshire. Fragments of rocks now in situ in Cumberland, 
as the Shap Fell granite, are dispersed, first, on the west side 
of the chain of hills separating Lancashire and Yorkshire, as 
far south as the Severn, i.e., by Castle Eden, Preston, Lan- 
caster, Manchester, Trent Yalley, and over the plains of 
Cheshire and into North Wales ; then, on the east side, 
these Cumberland boulders, having passed over Stain- 
moor Forest, 1,400 feet above the sea, cover the plain 
of York from the Tees to the Humber ; thence they have 
gone by the aid of icebergs over the oolite hills, 1,500 feet, 
down to the east coast in Holderness. This diluvium con- 
sists of an upper and lower deposit ; the lower of clay mixed 
with boulders, which are scratched on their longer axes — 
marine shells belonging to the Arctic Sea are found in a 
broken state, laying above the bones of the mammalia. It 
is a little singular that Cuniming, Trimmer, and others 
should have come to the following conclusions : — 
1. That a great current from the Northern Seas had set in 
upon the north-west shores of Great Britain and Ireland, 
with the climate of an Arctic character. 
2. That a gradual submergence of the British Isles took 
place to at least 1,600 feet. 
3. A gradual emergence, the climate becoming again genial. 
