DISTRIBUTION OF BOULDERS IN WEST 
CUMBERLAND. 
By J. D. KENDALL, C.E., E.G.S, 
HON, SEC, OF THE ASSOCIATION, 
(Read at Maryport General Meeting. ) 
THE remarks which I am about to submit for your consideration 
have reference to a subject which, as many of you will be aware, is 
engaging a large share of the attention of geologists. Most of 
you, I suppose, have noticed the superficial accumulations of sand, 
gravel, and clay, stuck full of boulders, which, in discontinuous 
patches of various thicknesses, extend over the greater part of the 
_low ground of this district. Similar accumulations are found over 
the principal part of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as in the 
north of Europe, Asia, and America. <A few years ago these 
upper deposits, like the old slaty rocks of pre-Devonian age, were 
almost entirely avoided on account of the difficulty attending their 
study. Now they are the two most active fields of geological 
investigation. It is, however, only with the former that we are 
concerned at present ; and it is somewhat curious to observe how, 
as in most other branches of geological study, the development of 
thought in connection with these superficial accumulations has 
gradually tended towards simplification, by substituting for the 
cataclysms of the earlier geologists such operations as we now see 
Y going on around us. Many curious speculations have been in- 
7 dulged in at different times as to the origin of the deposits under 
_ Consideration, but with those I do not propose to deal ; suffice it 
