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who may hereafter be engaged in examining similar districts, may
be better enabled to compare them.
A conglomerate, composed of rounded stones of various sizes, from
the smallest gravel to the weight of several pounds, held
together by a ferruginous, calcareous cement, forms a hill of a
parabolic shape, about 1200 feet in height, called Mell Fell; and
some lesser elevations, extending to the foot of Ullswater. The
pebbles are evidently fragments of older rocks, rounded by
attrition, and must have been transported from some distance,
apparently from the southward: but what became of the surplus
when the hill was rounded to its present shape? this has been
generally taken as a member of the old red sandstone formation,
which is understood to pass under the adjacent limestone, but,
except perhaps near Shap Abbey, there actual contact or order of
superposition has scarcely, in this district, been discovered.
A large mass of similar composition appears in the bed and on the
banks of the river Lune, at Kirkby Lonsdale. Its dip indicates
that it should pass under the limestone which appears at a little
distance; but its containing no nodules of limestone seem to
militate against this assumption,[1] except it can be supposed
that the lower bed of limestone, which extends from Coniston
through Long-Sleddale, has been disrupted by the protrusion of
Shap Fells; and the rounded fragments, along with those of
adjoining rocks, deposited here; and then, by going a step
further, may many of the pebbles of Mell Fell be supposed to be
derived from the same neighbourhood. Something of the same kind
also appears in the
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