568 
and the Mountain limestone, with its own peculiar thin beds 
and conglomerate, seems to lie on this with an even line, as 
it does on the Silurian rocks on either side. Fossils occur 
among the fragments of silurian, at the very base of the 
Mountain limestone. Corals seem to have grown in abun- 
dance among the loose stones and on the rocky sea bottom, 
but no fossil have I ever found in those pockets of Old red. 
This will apply also to the larger patches near Kirkby- 
Lonsdale, Sedbergh, Kendal, and the foot of Ullswater, as 
far as we can observe them in those faulted districts. At 
any rate, we may say that the Mountain limestone never 
rests on an irregular surface; all the old valleys and minor 
inequalities having been filled with coarse conglomerate pre- 
vious to the deposition of the Carboniferous rocks. 
It would appear from this that we have in the Old red the 
remains of an earlier formation lying on the irregular surface 
of an old continent, and small patches were preserved in the 
deeper hollows when the carboniferous sea planed across it. 
But, on the other hand, in Hebblethwaite Gill, near Sed- 
bergh, we find the coarse red conglomerate succeeded by 
shales, grits, and earthy limestones; and in these shales a 
second bed of red conglomerate occurs, in every respect 
similar to that below. On the north side of the Howgill 
Fells, near Tebay and Shap, there seems to be a clear passage 
up from the coarse red conglomerate into finer conglomerates, 
sandstones, shales, and limestones. The shales and sand- 
stones contain remains of plants and marine shells. On the 
whole, therefore, it seems most probable that, as the land 
went down in the early carboniferous period, the sea kept 
planing off everything up to the Lake mountains. Perhaps 
there was then a more rapid subsidence ; at any rate, the sea 
crept up the hills, and found in the recesses great masses of 
debris, the result of sub-aerial waste. Some of these got 
covered up, and are still preserved; others were washed 
