The Age of the Mountains of Snowdonia

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Abstract
The Development of Opinion on the Problem. —Half a century ago, it seems to have been widely held that the mountains of North Wales were, as mountains, very ancient; much older, it was remarked, than some which are loftier and more famous. Yet by 1867–1870 it had come to be generally recognized that the mountains of the Inner Hebrides (which are very nearly as high) are, as mountains, of Tertiary age (Geikie 1897, pp. 114–5). Why did not this arouse speculation with regard to the mountains of Wales? Some ten years later it was urged by Goodchild (1880; repeated, more fully, in 1888 and 1889) that the mountains of Lakeland had been sculptured out of a high plateau which was a sub-Cretaceous floor, so that, as mountains, they must be of Tertiary age. About the same time, Ramsay (1881, p. 319) expressed an opinion which approached Goodchild's somewhat nearly: “During the deposition of the chalk, there is no proof that the higher parts of Wales were altogether submerged, but rather the opposite.” He does not (so far as I know) specify the grounds for this “opposite”, and seems indeed not to have thorough-going confidence in it, for he says on p. 320: “It thus appears that since the beginning of the Permian epoch, the higher ground of Wales has formed land well raised above the level of the sea, and even if there be some doubt about this while the chalk was being deposited, that must have formed merely an episode

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