om the Scottish
border to the centre of England, running south; (3) _Wales_, occupying
the peninsula between the Mersey and the Bristol Channel, and
extending beyond the political boundaries of the principality to
include Shropshire and Hereford; and (4) the peninsula of _Cornwall
and Devon_. They are all similar in the great features of their
land-forms, which have been impressed upon them by the prolonged
action of atmospheric denudation rather than by the original order and
arrangement of the rocks; but each group has its own geological
character, which has imparted something of a distinctive individuality
to the scenery. Taken as a whole, the Western Division depends for its
prosperity on mineral products and manufactures rather than on
farming; and the staple of the farmers is live-stock rather than
agriculture. The people of the more rugged and remoter groups of this
division are by race survivors of the early Celtic stock, which, being
driven by successive invaders from the open and fertile country of the
Eastern Division, found refuges in the less inviting but more easily
defended lands of the west. Even where, as in the Pennine region and
the Lake District, the people have been completely assimilated with
the Teutonic stock, they retain a typical character, marked by
independence of opinion approaching stubbornness, and by great
determination and enterprise.

_Lake District._--The Lake District occupies the counties of
Cumberland, Westmorland and North Lancashire. It forms a roughly
circular highland area, the drainage lines of which radiate outward
from the centre in a series of narrow valleys, the upper parts of
which cut deeply into the mountains, and the lower widen into the
surrounding plain. Sheets of standing water are still numerous, and
formerly almost every valley contained a single long narrow
lake-basin; but some of these have been subdivided, drained or filled
up by natural processes. The existing lakes include Windermere and
Coniston, draining south; Wastwater, draining south-west, Ennerdale
water, Buttermere and Crummock water (the two latter, originally one
lake, are now divided by a lateral delta), draining north-west;
Derwent water and Bassenthwaite water (which were probably originally
one lake), and Thirlmere, draining north; Ullswater and Haweswater,
draining north-east. There are, besides, numerous mountain tarns of