13 
THE HISTORY OF A PIECE OF CRAVEN 
LIMESTONE. 
(Illustrated by the Lantern). 
By Mr. A. W I LM ORE, B.Sc., F.G.S., of Colne. 
January 15 th, 1907. 
The district dealt with by the lecturer lies between Clitheroe, 
Skipton and Hellifield, in a triangular patch of country 
described as the Craven lowlands. The knolls in the immediate 
neighbourhood of Clitheroe had been the subject of keen 
controversy, into which he had ventured by a paper at the 
British Association, which, owing to his illness at the time, 
had been read for him, and which led to a lively discussion. 
This showed that there were real problems of general interest 
to be attacked in the Craven district. 
After showing and explaining diagrams of the earth’s 
strata, making special reference to the palseozoic group, in 
which were found the rocks of Pendle, Craven and district, 
the lecturer threw on the screen the various types of limestone 
formed of deposits of sea-life in shallow seas where life was 
very plentiful, forming great masses of calcareous material. 
The chief types of organisms were the crinoidal, shelly, 
foraminiferal, the mixed, fine limestone mud, cemented and 
hardened, and the irregular breccias, made up of various kinds 
of fragmentary calcareous stuff. One of the problems which 
had fascinated him was the evidence they found of evolution 
in the life forms — the different structures in the coral character- 
istics of the carboniferous period. In the simple and more 
complex structures of these organisms they had some marvel- 
lous evolution theories which one scarcely knew how to 
interpret. These limestones are not horizontal in western 
Craven — the lowland country, though they are fairly so in 
north-eastern Craven — the highland country. In the Craven 
lowlands they are very much contorted and faulted, and the 
peculiar scenery is partly a result of these characteristics. 
The scenery of the Craven highland country is almost entirely 
determined by its limestone rocks — the scars, the gorges, 
and the deep canon-like valleys being directly consequent 
