S48 Proceedings of the British Association. 



with transported boulders, many of which are of rocks quite different 

 from any near the spots where they occur, and some even not re- 

 cognizable as British rocks. Could Mr Ly ell's ideas regarding the 

 office of icebergs be true, that they had been the means of trans- 

 porting gravel to distant places ? Boulders of the Shap Fell granite 

 had been found in the south-eastern part of Yorkshire ; in the in- 

 terior, there were great accumulations of them in many places, 

 their directions seemed all to converge to a certain point, in what 

 is termed the Pennine chain, but on this chain no boulders have 

 been observed, except at one point, from which you look towards 

 Shap Fell ; towards the north they have been drifted nearly as far 

 as Carlisle, but there is no trace of them towards the west. We 

 also find boulders from Carrick Fell carried to Newcastle and 

 the Yorkshire coast, and these have been drifted over the same 

 point of Stainmoor. Mr Phillips gave several conflicting opinions 

 of different geologists, to account for this extraordinary transporta- 

 tion : the bursting of the banks of lakes ; the alternate elevation 

 and depression of mountain chains ; and the supposition that the 

 entire country had been under the sea, when the distribution of 

 boulders had taken place. — Mr Sedgwick then rose, and remarked^ 

 that the direction of transport of the blocks may have been modified 

 by the surface over which they were carried ; and that Sir James 

 Hall had been the first who had observed the Shap Fell boulders. 

 These boulders Mr Sedgwick had noticed on the shores of the Sol- 

 way Firth, mixed with gravel from Dumfries-shire. He alluded 

 to the action of water upon the crests of mountains, and to the oc- 

 currence of transported blocks at considerable elevations. It was 

 well known that mountain lakes were gradually filling up ; and he 

 had shewn in a paper to the Geological Society the relation of a lake 

 to the age of the valley containing it. With the diluvial gravel over 

 the country we find associated organic remains, — a strong proof 

 that the land must have been dry when the transportation took 

 place. — Mr Murchison had observed these boulders associated with 

 recent shells at various elevations, — consequently, the land must 

 have been at one time under the sea, and have been subsequently 

 elevated. There must have been a relative change of the level of 

 land and sea ; and Professor Esmark, in Norway, had been the ori- 

 ginator of the idea of the icebergs transporting gravel. He referred 

 to-the valley of the Inn, in the Tyrolese Alps, as illustrating this 

 alteration of level : boulders of granite had been found on calcareous 

 mountains composing one of its sides, elevated five or six thousand 



