File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12895361634).jpg

1864.. HULL AND GREEN MILLSTONE-GRIT. 253
row gorge of the Alport. Its base is formed by the cliffs of Kinder
Scout; and its sides, which are extremely irregular in outline, by
the similar cliffs overlooking the two valleys just named. Its upper
surface is somewhat uneven, and is entirely composed of the Mill-
stone-grit, which, for the most part, is buried beneath a thick coat-
ing of peat, fissured into innumerable gullies and clefts, which cause
an excursion across a surface, which on the map appears a plain, to
be in reality a succession of dips and emersions.
Fig. 3. — Views of Rocks on the Peak.
The grit, however, sometimes appears in little bosses, or it throws
up groups of tabulated or fantastically-shaped stones, the forms of
which I cannot but regard as the results of old marine denudation.
In some places, especially near Edale Head, whole acres are covered
by these groups or multitudinous assemblages of water-worn rocks.
Amongst the various forms the table is common, but the smith's
anvil seems to be a special favourite

nowhere else, as far as my
acquaintance with these hills has extended, have I observed such
numerous examples, in the same space, of seashore rocks.
The flanks of the valleys in the Peak country are also remarkable
for enormous land-slips, the origin of which may in many cases be
placed as far back as the final retirement of the sea at the close of the
glacial period. Almost everywhere around the steep cliffs of the
Peak itself these slips occur, and are easily to be accounted for
when we examine the nature of the beds which underlie the Scout
Grit forming the summit of the escarpment. The grit is here un-
derlain by shales, which intervene between it and the Yoredale
Grit. Hence the latter, being undermined by the retiring waters,
or by atmospheric agencies, as the case may be, have yielded to the
enormous pressure of the superincumbent millstones, which descended
in masses from their original elevations. A similar arrangement of
the beds has caused the landslips (or coast-slips) amongst the Oolitic
escarpments of the south-west of England and the Chalk-downs,
and indeed wherever solid rock forms a cliff resting upon strata of
clay or shale. Alport Edge, on the eastern side of the valley, and
Coombs Rocks, near Mottram, afford similar instances worthy of
being