THE PHYSICAL GEOGKAPHY OF THE PAST. 
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of ages. These Carboniferous Rocks doubtless owe their 
present position to the action of the same forces which 
elevated the Pennine Range. In the case of the Leicester¬ 
shire Coalfield, upon the western edge of which our town 
of Burton is situated, I shall be able to give you some proof 
of the correctness of this statement, but I shall have little 
time to refer to the South Staffordshire and Warwickshire 
areas. I may state, however, that, unlike the Derbyshire 
district, in all three of these Coalfields we have occasional 
glimpses of the old sea floor upon which the Carboniferous 
Rocks were deposited ; thus affording us valuable information 
in our attempt to reconstruct the physical features of the 
country at that very remote period. 
On the eastern side of what we may term our home 
district of the Leicestershire or Ashby Coalfield, this old floor 
upon which the Carboniferous sediments were thrown down 
has been bared to the light of day, exposing in Cliarnwood 
Forest a large tract of some of the oldest rocks in the 
British Isles, consisting mainly of slates, grits, volcanic 
agglomerates, and syenite, and occupying a ridge of ground 
about eight miles long and five miles broad. 
Although the elevation of the Cliarnwood ridge does not, 
in its highest point, reach more than 900 feet above sea 
level, it presents, especially when viewed from its eastern 
side, a bold, serrated edge, in strange contrast to the gently 
flowing outline of most of the other hills of the Midlands. 
Its jagged and craggy summit, under certain atmospheric 
conditions, has a strangely mountainous aspect, and has often 
been justly compared with a miniature Alpine range. This 
resemblance, after all, is not a fancied one, for the Cliarnwood 
Hills have all the characteristics of a true mountain range. It 
was pointed out, many years ago by the late Professor 
Jukes, that here, within a very small area, and without any 
laborious climbing, we can study at our leisure nearly all the 
geological phenomena afforded by mountainous districts. 
Although of very diminutive proportions as compared with 
the mountain chains of Europe, we must bear in mind that 
denudation has played its part here also, and that it is only a 
ruin of its former self. Its elevation, doubtless coeval with 
that of the Pennine Range, took place at a very remote period 
of the world’s history. The now lofty chains of the Alps, the 
Pyrenees, the Andes, and, in fact, nearly all the important 
mountain ranges of the world are but mere children in point 
of age when compared with the venerable antiquity of our 
Leicestershire hill country. In fact, the Cliarnwood area 
had an elevation far hi excess of its present height, and had 
