184 
HUGHES : INGLEBOROUGH. 
rock is, as a rule, sound and solid. Where there appears to be 
an exception we very often see good reason for believing that 
this is due to water which has found its way down through the 
jointed limestone to the impervious base, or that the breaking 
up of the underlying Silurian or Bala is primarily due to earth 
movements, of which we can obtain independent evidence (see 
p. 179, and Fig. 2, near Dale Barn ; 188, and Fig. 5). 
The surface upon which the Carboniferous system rests at 
Ingleborough is therefore either a glaciated surface or a sea 
plain, but not an old land surface unswept by denudation before 
it was submerged. I have also already pointed out what happens 
in the adjoining area if we follow this Basement Bed beyond the 
Ingleborough district. It is thickened out into great but very 
roughly stratified masses of gravel, sand, and mud, running as 
far as can be made out in long valleys. This material is made 
up of the debris of the rocks of the district, and there are no far 
transported blocks or any evidence of glacial action. This can 
be studied in the valley of the Rawthey, near Sedbergli, and in 
that of the Lune, near Kirby Lonsdale, and, further afield still, 
in the great masses of red conglomerate at the foot of Ullswater. 
Referring to these, Mr. R. D. Oldham, of the Geological 
Survey of India, in a paper read at the meeting of the British 
Association at Bradford (1900, p. 765), expressed the opinion that 
they were torrential deposits, analogous to those which he had 
seen formed at the foot of the hills in Western and Central Asia. 
He observed also that red soils were much more common in tropical 
than in temperate regions. He does not discuss the possibility of 
the material being swept off the adjoining hills into the depths of 
a gradually submerged fiord, but considers that it was all carried 
by torrents over areas which were usually dry, with seasonal or 
periodical bursts of rain. If so, they must rather resemble the 
cones of dejection at the foot of steeper valleys or the delta-like 
deposit spread during flood further over the jilain be^^ond. 
The interesting speculation suggested by the striated frag- 
ments from these beds seen near Helm Knot, in Dent, I have 
already discussed in the pages of our Proceedings,* arriving at 
* Notes on the Geology of parts of Yorkshire and Westmorland, Geol. 
Polyt. Soc, West Riding Yorks., 17th July. 1867. 
