570 
where we have other evidence that the beds have been much 
disturbed. "We see, where the red conglomerate can be 
examined close to the great faults, that the beds do not get 
crumpled up, as in the Silurian or any even bedded homo- 
geneous rocks, but that, because the hard and included pebbles 
resist more than the soft matrix, the whole mass re- adjusts 
itself to suit its new position, the included pebbles being often 
scrunched against one another, scratched, and broken. 
In one place I found, inclined at a small angle to the 
bedding, a face of jointage, on which were striae similar 
to those on the scratched stones, running across the soft 
matrix, and included fragments alike. This, of course, leaves 
it open to suppose that the old red conglomerate may be the 
wreck of a glacial drift ; but as we know of no gravel made 
up of fragments of similar rocks, which are not directly or 
indirectly derived from glacial deposits, the arguments from 
the shape of the stones, &c, cannot, in the present state of 
our knowledge, go for much. 
One point of great interest is brought out by this kind of 
examination of the base of the Carboniferous series. It is 
the enormous break between Silurian and Carboniferous times. 
The lowest and variable beds of the upper series rest on the 
upturned edges of all the formations from the Skiddaw slates 
to the top of the Ludlow rocks, while the Lower old red, 
which in "Wales is conformable to the Tilestones, is not seen 
in this part of the country, having been, probably, denuded 
away. That is to say, we see that formations equalling in 
thickness the whole of the sedimentary deposits from the 
base of the Carboniferous to the present time were removed 
previous to the Carboniferous period ; and from the nature 
and position of the unconformity between the Upper and 
Lower silurian rocks, the greater part of this denudation must 
have taken place in the unrepresented time between the 
Ludlow and Old red conglomerate of the Lake District. 
