Physically the county may be roughly divided into four areas. (1) The great upland tract in the northeastern part, bordering on the western margin of Yorkshire and part of Durham, consists mainly of a wild moorland area, rising to elevations of 2780 feet in Dun Fell, 2803 in Dufton Fell, 2591 feet in Mickle Fell, 2008 Nine Standards, 2328 High Seat, 2323 Wilbert Fell, and Swarth Fell 2235 feet above the sea. (2) The second area comprises about a third of the massif of the Lake District proper, with its eastward continuation, the Langdale and Ravenstonedale Fells, and also the fells of Middleton and Barbon farther south. These include Helvellyn (3118 feet), Bow Fell (2959), Pika Blisca (2304), Langdale Pike (2300), High Street (2663), Fairfield (2950), the Calf (2220), besides others of considerable elevation. All but the lower parts of the valleys within these two areas lie at or above 1000 feet above Ordnance datum; and more than half the remainder lies between that elevation and 1750 feet, the main mass of high land lying in the area first mentioned. (3) The third area includes the comparatively low country between the northern slopes of that just described and the edge of the uplands to the north-east thereof. This includes the so-called Vale of Eden. About three-fifths of this area lies between the 500 and the 1000 feet contour. (4) The Kendal area consists mainly of undulating lowlands, varied by hills ranging in only a few cases up to 1000 feet. More than half this area lies below the 500-feet contour. Westmorland may thus be said to be divided in the middle by uplands ranging in a general southeasterly direction, and to be bordered all along its eastern side by the elevated moorlands of the Pennine chain. The principal rivers are—in the northern area the higher part of the Tees, the Eden with its main tributaries, the Lowther and the Eamont, and in the southern area the Lune and the Kent, with their numerous tributary becks and gills. The lakes include Ullswater (the greater part), Windermere (the whole), Grasmere, Hawes Water, and numerous smaller lakes and tarns, which are chiefly confined to the north-western parts of the county. Amongst the other physical features of more or less interest are numerous crags and scars, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the lakes; others are Mallerstang Edge, Helbeck, above Brough; Haikable, or High Cup Gill, near Appleby; Orton Scars; and the limestone crags west of Kirkby Lonsdale. Amongst the waterfalls are Caldron Snout, on the northern confines of the county, flowing over the Whin Sill, and Stock Gill Force, Rydal Force, Colwith Force, and Dungeon Gill Force, all situated amongst the volcanic rocks in the west. Hell Gill, near the head, of the Eden, and Stenkrith, near Kirkby Stephen, are conspicuous examples of natural arches eroded by the streams flowing through them. Am ongst the more striking hills outside the massif of the Lake District are Wilbert Fell, Roman Fell, Murton Pike (1949 feet), Dufton Pike (1578 feet), and Knock Pike (1306 feet).

Geology.— The geological formations represented in Westmorland are :—(A) (1) recent deposits, and (2) glacial drift; (B) New Red rocks—(1) Upper New Red, and (2) Lower New Red or Permian; (C) Carboniferous rocks—(1) Coal-Measures and Millstone Grit, (2) Yoredale Rocks and Mountain Limestone, including the Roman Fell beds, Calciferous Sandstones, and the Lower Limestone Shale, and (3) the Upper Old Red; (D) Siluro-Cambrian rocks—(1) Silurian rocks proper, (2) Upper Cambrian, Ordovician or Lower Silurian rocks, and (3) Cambrian rocks; (E) Metamorphic rocks of different ages; and (F) various Plutonic rocks.

Alluvium in some form or another occurs as marginal deposits alongside streams, or as deltas where streams enter lakes, or where they spread at the foot of a hill-side. Peat forms a mantle of varying thickness on the damper or the more shady parts of nearly all the uplands, ranging locally up to a thickness of 10 feet, and occurs on the sites of old tarns or of old swamps. Screes of rock waste are of general occurrence about the lower parts of nearly all the crags, and as such they play an important part in the scenery of the district. Glacial deposits, in the form of boulder clay, of sand and gravel, or of boulders, are extensively distributed over the lowlands, and to a variable distance up the hill-sides also. They seldom much exceed 100 feet in thickness; but their occurrence is of considerable importance in relation to the scenery, and still more so to the character of the subsoil. Boulders of various kinds are scattered far and wide over nearly all but the highest parts of the county.

Between the period represented by the boulder clay and the next older deposit in Westmorland a great hiatus exists, which is elsewhere represented by several very important geological formations. Here the newest rock next in the series is the St Bees Sandstone and the gypseous shales at its base, which together probably represent the Bunter series. These soft red sandstones, flags, and marls with gypsum are all confined to the northern part of the county, where they form much of the low ground extending along the foot of the Cross Fell escarpment from the county boundary east of Penrith south-eastward to Kirkby Stephen. Some of the prettiest scenery of these parts (Crowdundle Beck; Mill Beck, Dufton; and Podgill, Kirkby Stephen) owes its character to these rocks. The stone is used extensively for building. Gypsum occurs in workable quantities in the shales near the base. Where fully developed these rocks are not less than 2000 feet in thickness. The next formations in descending order consist of the Magnesian Limestone (0-30 feet), the Helton Plant Beds (0-40 feet), the Penrith Sandstone and its horizontal equivalents the Brockrams (0-1200 feet). All these are older than the rocks previously mentioned, but belong to the same series. They occur in the same tract of country.

The highest rocks of the Carboniferous age in Westmorland are represented by a tiny patch of true Coal-Measures, let down, and so preserved from denudation, by one of the great Pennine faults, between Brough and Barras, in north-eastern Westmorland. These rocks consist of several thick and valuable seams of coal, and of beds of fireclay equally valuable, interbedded with several hundred feet of the usual sandstones and shales. True Coal-Measures are not yet known to occur elsewhere in Westmorland. Millstone Grit of the ordinary type underlies these Coal-Measures, and is seen to perhaps a thickness of nearly 2000 feet. Except a small patch exposed near Appleby, and also another near Kirkby Lonsdale, the remainder of the Millstone Grit is confined to the higher parts of the wild moorlands along the eastern border of the county. The highest member of the second subdivision of the Carboniferous is the Yoredale Rocks, which form the chief mass of the hills forming the Westmorland part of the great central watershed of northern England. Most of the Cross Fell escarpment, of Stainmoor, and of the higher parts of the valley of the Eden consist of these rocks, as do also much of the lowlands. They consist essentially of a series of thin beds of limestone, parted by variable thicknesses of sandstone and shales, with here and there a thin coal-seam. Their thickness ranges from 1500 to 2500 feet. The Borradale coal-seam, and the Tan Hill seam, in these rocks, have long been worked for local purposes. Below the Yoredale Rocks limestone preponderates, and the grey limestones of this series form very conspicuous and striking features in the landscape around Kendal, Beetham, and Farleton; Kirkby Stephen, Orton, and Shap; Brough, Helgill, and Murton, and thence north-westward. Near Kirkby Stephen is nearly 2000 feet of this limestone, locally almost undivided. Near Kendal, at Barbon, between Ravenstonedale and Shap Wells, and near Helton occur masses of red gravelly conglomerate and red sandstones belonging to the Upper Old Red. The materials of the conglomerate largely consist of rocks foreign to the district. For a period of immense length preceding the deposition of the Upper Old Red the older rocks of Westmorland seem to have been exposed to a complicated series of disturbances and denudations, with, as a result, the removal from some areas of a thickness of strata above (rather than below) 5 miles in thickness. It was across the upturned and denuded ends of this vast pile of rock that the Upper Old Red was laid down. The older strata, grouped under D above, are therefore separated from the Upper Old Red by an unconformity representing the removal from this area, and the accumulation in some unknown area elsewhere, of a pile of rock 5 miles in thickness. This is one of the greatest breaks yet made known in the whole of the geological record.

The Siluro-Cambrian rocks are perhaps more fully developed in Westmorland and Cumberland than they are anywhere else,—the aggregate thickness of strata referable to one or other of the horizons in this group being at least 6 miles. The highest member of this series is the Kirkby Moor Flags, which consist of a considerable thickness of mudstones and sandstones, much disturbed and contorted in places, and form the whole of the low hill country on the east side of the turnpike road between Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale, and extending thence eastward to a little beyond the Lune. Lithologically and palaeontologically these rocks agree in a general way with the Ludlow rocks of Shropshire. Their highest beds are unconformable to the Upper Old Red, sometimes violently so. These rocks graduate downward into the Bannisdale Slates, 5200 feet of close alternations of flaggy grits and rudely cleaved sandy mudstones. These rocks occupy a large area around Kendal, and to the south-west of that town. They also form a large part of the Howgill Fells. These in turn graduate downward into the Coniston Grits and Flags, which consist of 7000 feet of alternations of tough micaceous grits and rudely-cleaved mudstones,—the whole mass tending near its base to pass into finely-striped and cleaved mudstones, the Coniston Flags. The tough and durable nature of the harder beds of this series gives rise to a series of mammillated hills. All the rocks of the series here referred to give rise to a type of scenery different in many essential respects from that resulting from the waste of any other rocks in Westmorland, so that the hill scenery south of a line joining Ambleside and Shap Wells is distinctly different from that to the north of that line. Near their base the argillaceous members of the series graduate downwards into a few hundred feet of pale grey-green mudstone, with a peculiar porcellanous texture; and these, in their turn, graduate downwards into a small thickness of pitch-black mudstones, with much the general character of indurated fuller’s earth, and usually crowded with graptolites having the general facies of those elsewhere found in the Llandeilo rocks. The pale grey beds are the Stockdale Beds, or ‘ ‘ pale slates.” The Graptolitic Mudstones locally have at their base a conglomerate, which consists of rolled fragments of rocks from various horizons in the older series. In general terms these two groups of rocks may be described as occurring along a narrow outcrop extending from near Ambleside to Shap Wells. They reappear also near Dufton and at Cautla. In Westmorland the Llandovery beds of Wales appear to be absent, as the rocks next older than the Graptolitic Mudstones consist of rocks characterized by fossils of an unmistakably Bala type. The Westmorland type of these rocks consists of a mass of alternations of volcanic tuffs and lavas, with the marine equivalents of these, and with limestones and shales, the whole series thinning as it is traced toward the centre of the Lake District near the head of Windermere. The Coniston Limestone is the best known member of this series. The series as a whole, however, finds its best and most fully-developed representatives outside the area of old subaerial volcanic cones and craters on whose surface the Coniston Limestone lies. The calcareous members of this series are usually replete with well-preserved fossils in great variety. The series under notice forms some conspicuous features along the foot of the Cross Fell escarpment. Rising from beneath these series just mentioned comes the vast pile of old volcanic ejectamenta, largely subaerial in the typical district, which is known as the Borradale Volcanic Series (see Cumberland). Outside the massif of the Lake District we meet with the submarine equivalents of these subaerial accumulations. These are well seen at Milburn. They consist of many thousands of feet of alternations of submarine tuffs, with shales and mudstones, seemingly identical in character with the Skiddaw Slates, which in the centre of the Lake District mainly lie at the base of the volcanic rocks. The next type may be described as a vast pile of old marine sedimentary accumulations, ten or more thousand feet in total thickness, and mainly consisting of alternations of indurated shales, mudstones, and flags, with subordinate beds of grit. This is the Skiddaw Slate, which may be conveniently examined on and around Murton Pike, near Appleby. The same general type of strata prevails over a very wide area. The bottom of these rocks has never been reached. The principal areas of metamorphic rocks in Westmorland are situated in the volcanic area. Rocks more or less altered by deep-seated action occur also around the Shan Granite. The alteration of the volcanic rocks here takes the form of an approach to the mineral characters of granite; but there is no passage from the one to the other. The sedimentary rocks are altered also, more or less, but in a different way: the calcareous beds are developed into idocrase rocks, the cleavage in the Coniston Flags is sealed or welded up anew, while the grits are rendered more or less quartzitic.

Amongst the plutonic rocks the chief is the well-known granitic porphyry, fragments of which occur in the Upper Old Red near Shap. There are many intrudes of diorite, gabbro, felsite, mica trap, and the like,—all Post-Silurian and Pre-Carboniferous in age. Another well-known plutonic rock, of later date than the Carboniferous period, is the Whin Sill, an intrusive sheet of dolerite, which has eaten its way into the Carboniferous rocks over hundreds of square miles in the north of England. It forms the most characteristic feature of the sombre and gloomy fell-side recess known as “High Cup Gill,” or Haikable, near Appleby; and it also forms the λvaterfall known as Caldron Snout. It is the newest intrusive rock known in Westmorland.

The whole county is traversed in many directions by great numbers of faults. One set, the Pennine faults, call for a brief notice here. Two lines of disturbance continued northward from the Craven faults enter the county east of Kirkby Lonsdale. One ranges north-north-eastwards, on the east of the Barbon Fells, and lets in the Carboniferous rocks forming Gragreth, throwing down about 2000 feet on the east; it ranges by Dent, and east of Sedbergh, entering the county again in the valley between Clouds and the Ravenstonedale Fells. Here its effects are as strikingly exhibited as at Gragreth, as the Millstone Grit summit of Wilbert Fell on one side of the fault is let down to the same level as the summits of the Silurian hills on the other. The second set of faults referred to throws down in the opposite direction, letting down the Millstone Grit, the Yoredale Rocks, the Mountain Limestone, and finally, as its throw diminishes, the Old Red, against the foot of the Silurian massif of the Barbon Fells. This fault ranges parallel to the general course of the Lune nearly as far northward as Sedbergh, where it is joined by another set ranging east-north-east, which joins the set first described as ranging north-north-east to Ravenstonedale at a point near the county boundary north of Cautla. Thence the conjoined faults run northward in a very complex manner, producing some important effects upon the scenery about the foot of Mallerstang. Near Kirkby Stephen its throw changes from a downthrow to the east to one in the opposite direction, which throw increases rapidly in amount as the faults trend northwards, until at the foot of Stain-moor, below Barras, its throw amounts to quite 6000 feet down to the west; and we find the important patch of Coal-Measures above noticed let down in consequence. At this point it changes in direction, running north-westerly, with many complications, past Brough, Helton, Dufton, and Milburn, out of the county at the foot of Cross Fell. Along this line it throws down to the southwest several thousands of feet; and it is to the complicated disturbances accompanying this great dislocation that nearly the whole of the more striking physical features of North Westmorland owe their origin. It is in connexion with the same important sets of disturbances also that the existence of most of the mineral veins of the district is due.

Climate. — The rainfall is exceptionally heavy. The largest quantity recorded appears to be that in the mountains along the county boundary west of Grasmere, where the mean amounts to as much as 140 inches. At Sty Head the rainfall in 1872 amounted to 243 ’ 98 inches. The area of greatest rainfall forms a rude ellipsoid around these two places, lying with its longest dimensions towards the south-east, nearly coinciding with the distribution of land above 1500 feet. The heaviest precipitation takes place in the months of January, September, and October, and the smallest in July. At Grasmere, well in the heart of the mountains, but farther east, and at a much lower elevation, the mean rainfall for the past twenty years has been 80 inches, rain of '01 inch or more falling on about 210 days of the year. Between Grasmere and Shap the rainfall diminishes somewhat in the mountain areas. But in the lower ground still farther east the rainfall steadily but more rapidly diminishes, until at Milburn (644 feet) the mean for the last ten years has been about 33 inches on 175 days in the year. At Kendal the mean appears to be about 50 inches, and the number of wet days about 190 in the year; at Kirkby Lonsdale it is rather less, and at Kirkby Stephen less again. The mean temperature for January is between 38° and 39° F., February 40°-41°,

March 4l’-42°, April 46°-47°, May 51°, June 58°, "July 60°-61 β , August 60°, September 56", October 49", November 42°, and December 38°-40°. The principal characteristic of the climate is the preponderance of cloudy, wet, and cold days, especially in the spring and the autumn,—combining to retard the growth of vegetation. The late stay of cold winds in the spring has much to do with the same, especially in the lowlandsextending along the foot of the Cross Fell escarpment from Brough north-westwards. Here, for weeks at a time, prevails a kind of cyclone revolving on a horizontal axis parallel to the escarpment,—the “helm-wind.” The remarkable feature connected with it is that, when the wind is rushing furiously from the slopes of the escarpment in the direction of the low grounds, little movement of the air can be detected on the summit.

Flora and Fauna.— Among the denizens of the mountains are several plants distinctly alpine in character; and others, more or less boreal in their principal stations, are here found at nearly their southernmost point of distribution. Bog plants are also conspicuous in their variety, and include several forms of some rarity. The lichens, mosses, and ferns are well represented. Of trees the oak and the common elm do not seem quite at home anywhere except in the more sheltered nooks, and in parks and other cultivated places. But the place of the common elm is well supplied by the wych elm, which grows to great perfection. In place of the oak the sycamore is seen almost everywhere in the lower lands; and there are probably few parts of England where the ash thrives so well, or attains to so large dimensions. On the higher lands, up to the upper limit of woodland growth, the birch, the hazel, and the mountain ash, and, in limestone districts especially, the yew are the prevailing trees. The alder is abundant, and willows of various kinds occur. The upland character of...