Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, Vol. 4
Numerous tributaries, north and south, have cut deep lateral valleys and cleans: these, in turn, have each their lateral beck, and clough streams, and so on, until the ultimate springs on the hill sides and tops are reached. The wearing down of these continuous valleys, deans, and cloughs has produced a remarkable series of intervening hills. To seek the primary cause of these varied physiographica'l features we must go back to a remote geological period.
Countless ages ago an extensive area, including this portion of Yorkshire, formed part of a large estuary. A great continental river; was bringing down and depositing immense quantities ofsediment. The rocks were sinking intermittently. At one time the river current would be quicker: and at another the gradual deposit of sediment tended to check its ?ow. These varying currents deposited now sand, now mud, the different beds of which became consolidated into grit-rock, shales, or clay. These river deposits were laid down in comparatively horizontal layers.
Later a process of crumpling up of the earth's crust resulted in these horizontal layers being lifted up out of the sea and elevated into the extensive mountainous ridges known as the Pennine Chain. The upheaval in this district tilted the strata into an unequal anti clinal, the axis of which runs more or less N. And S., roughly, on the Lancashire boundary of the parish.
The sides of the anticlinal slope E. And W. From the central point of elevation. Our area lies on the dip to east, which is of a much gentler nature than that to the west.
At the time of this vast upheaval the present surface of the greater part of the parish was buried beneath the lower coal measures to the depth of a thousand or more feet. These, how ever, have since been removed by denudation to the face of the line of hills between Soil Hill and Fixby, which are the remains. The coal measure series had the same E. Or s.e. Dip as their underlying strata, and decided the direction the newly-formed streams must ?ow. Whilst cutting a passage through these at Elland there must have been a gradual carving out and wearing back of the valleys and deans from that point upwards by the joint action of the main stream and its tributaries.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
