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still to consider the situation and origin, and it appears that Ullswater, Coniston Water, the River Dudden, Waste Water, and Crummock Water lie along the lines of old faults, which no doubt in the first instance determined the flow of the water.

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Take another case. In the Jura the valleys are obviously (see Fig. 18) in many cases due to the folding of the strata. seldom happens, however, that the case is so simple. If the elevation is considerable the strata are often fractured, and fissures are produced. Again if the part elevated contains layers of more than one character, this at once establishes differences. Take, for instance, the Weald of Kent (Figs. 38, 39). Here we have (omitting minor layers) four principal strata concerned, namely, the Chalk, Greensand, Weald Clay, and Hastings Sands.

The axis of elevation runs (Fig. 39) from Winchester by Petersfield, Horsham, and Winchelsea to Boulogne, and as shown in the following section, taken from Professor Ramsay, we have on each side of the axis

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two ridges or escarpments," one that of the Chalk, the other that of the Greensand, while between the Chalk and the Greensand is a valley, and between the Greensand and the ridge of Hastings Sand an undulating plain, in each case with a gentle slope from about where the London and

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Fig. 38. a, a, Upper Cretaceous strata, chiefly Chalk, forming the North and South Downs; b, b, Escarpment of Lower Greensand, with a valley between it and the Chalk; c, c, Weald Clay, forming plains; d, Hills formed of Hastings Sand and Clay. The Chalk, etc., once spread across the country, as shown in the dotted lines.

Brighton railway crosses the Weald towards the east. Under these circumstances we might have expected that the streams draining the Weald would have run in the direction of the axis of elevation, and at the bases of the escarpments, as in fact the Rother does for part of its course, into the sea between the North and South Downs, instead of which as a rule they run north and south, cutting in some cases directly through the escarpments; on the north, for

[blocks in formation]

instance, the Wye, the Mole, the Darenth, the Medway, and the Stour; and on the south the Arun, the Addur, the Ouse, and the Cuckmere.

They do not run in faults or cracks, and it is clear that they could not have excavated their present valleys under circumstances such as now exist. They carry us back indeed to a time when the Greensand and Chalk were continued across the Weald in a great dome, as shown by the dotted lines in Fig. 38. They then ran down the slope of the dome, and as the Chalk and Greensand gradually weathered back, a process still in operation, the rivers deepened and deepened. their valleys, and thus were enabled to keep their original course.

Other evidence in support of this view is afforded by the presence of gravel beds in some places at the very top of the Chalk were doubtless

escarpment - beds which

deposited when, what is now the summit of a hill, was part of a continuous slope.

The course of the Thames offers us a somewhat similar instance. It rises on the Oolites

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