226 
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE PAST. 
west folds have impressed themselves on the physical confor¬ 
mation of the North of England, just as the great Pennine 
anticlinal has done further south ; for to them is due that 
system of east and west valleys, with high separating ridges, 
which run across the moorlands of Yorkshire. Here also, 
just as further south, the upper parts of the folds have been 
denuded right down to the Mountain Limestone. 
Having now briefly considered the structure of the 
Pennine Hills, we must turn our attention for a short time 
to the Central Midland District immediately south of the 
termination of the range, and I must ask you to accompany 
me in imagination to the summit of the Weaver Hills near 
Ashbourne. Here, at a height of 1,200 feet above sea level, 
we find ourselves on the southern extremity of the Pennine 
Range. If we look upon the range as the “ backbone ” of 
England, we are now standing upon what an anatomist would 
call its terminal caudal vertebra. To the north is all the 
rugged hill country of Derbyshire, but to the south, the 
country over which we look, stretched out like a map at our 
feet, is of an entirely different character, and consists of a 
gently undulating plain, which, elevated only 800 to 400 feet 
above the sea, is in fact the western extension of the largest 
plain in the world. When standing on Weaver we look 
towards the rising sun, if it were possible to extend our 
powers of vision to an indefinite extent, and allow for the 
curvature of the earth, we should find no mountain or hill to 
obstruct our line of sight until our eyes rested upon the Ural 
Mountains, which divide Europe from Asia. Broken only 
by the inconsiderable ripple of these mountains, this mighty 
plain extends across the whole of Northern Asia. 
In Europe the strata underlying the plain are of much 
more recent date than those constituting the Pennine Chain. 
At the base of the Derbyshire Hills they consist of sandstones 
and marls belonging to the New Red Sandstone series, 
which, sweeping round the base of the hills, follow every 
curve and inlet, so as to suggest, what is actually the case, 
that they were deposited round the flanks of the older rocks 
at a time when the high land of Derbyshire had its southern 
coast line in the Weaver Hills. 
Far away to the south and south-east we can discern, 
rising out of the sea-like plain, three tracks of elevated 
ground, which mark the position of the Coalfields of South 
Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire, respectively. 
In all three of these tracts Carboniferous Rocks are again 
brought to the surface in dome-like masses, from which the 
overlying New Red Rocks have been stripped by the waste 
