316 CAETEE : MINEEAL WELLS AT HAEROGATE. 
knowledg-e of the day and period in which we live. It would be 
ungenerous, as I am sure it is unnecessary, for me to occupy your 
time further upon the geolog-ical or chemical features which will be 
at once brought under 3'our notice. I may say, however, that I 
accept g-enerally the structural description which has been given of 
the district by nearly all the practical geologists who have written or 
reported thereon. That we owe the peculiar aspects of our natural- 
ly gifted position to the great axial development running nearly 
east and west through the central basin of Harrogate, appears to me 
beyond the reach of question or doubt. It is remarkable, however, 
to what an extraordinary height the lower strata have been pushed 
up b}^ the great anticlinal here referred to, as compared with the 
rocks (and their altitudes above the sea level), by which Harrogate 
is surrounded. I take the altitude of the Old Sulphur Well at say 
340 feet above the sea ; and here we have the spring exuding from 
stratification of a transitional order, not very remotely identified with 
the great and massive formation of the carboniferous limestone. It 
is not, however, by the immediately local contrasts that we can 
adequately judge of the grand geological problems at issue. Let us 
assume that the zone we now occupy in its undisturbed position, 
covered not only by the superimposed mass of the millstone grit, 
but also by the overlying coal bearing strata, which still flanks us at 
Horsforth on the south, and, although at a much greater distance by 
equally obvious relationships on the north. We have, then, but a 
slight effort of imagination to picture the time when the coal fields of 
Yorkshire and Durham were one continuous and united, or unbroken 
field of mineral wealth. This continuity has been broken, and some 
idea may perhaps be formed of the important part which the Harro- 
gate Anticlinal has played in bringing about this mighty revolution, 
if we reflect upon the fact that strata exposed in the basin of Low 
Harrogate, if sought for at Horsforth, only some eight or ten miles 
away, would be found at a depth of 1,200 or 1,500 feet below the 
present surface at that place. In the very able memoir on the G eology 
of the country north and east of Harrogate, from the pen of 
Mr. Strangways, it is suggested that "the Anticlinal appears to die 
out eastward from Harrogate, and there is no great anticlinal of Car- 
