606 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 



4. The Glaciated Rocks of Ambleside. 

 By Professor Edward Hull, LL.D., F.R.S. 



I visited Ambleside in the beginning of August in order to ascertain the 

 condition of the remarkable glaciated rock-surfaces which are to be seen there. 

 I first visited Ambleside in 1862, when I noticed the well-known form of this 

 rock, exhibiting on its smoothed surface the parallel groovings characteristic 

 of rocks over which the ice of a glacier had formerly passed. The rock, formed 

 of indurated grit and slate, presented the characteristic ' crag-and-tail ' form, 

 pointing to the direction, nearly magnetic north, up the valley of the Rothay, 

 from which I gathered that the glacier had descended from Helvellyn and the 

 neighbouring heights forming the central ridge of the Lake District. This view 

 was confirmed after an examination of several other valleys and mountains ; 

 and the results were published in the 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal.' 

 There are other ice-eroded bosses of rock rising out of the valley as well as from 

 the surface of Lake Windermere. But it is seldom that glacial stria? can now be 

 observed, owing to the effects of weather-action, so that the Ambleside rock is 

 of peculiar interest from the freshness of its surface. The sketch which accom- 

 panied my paper was reproduced by Sir Charles Lyell in his ' Antiquity of Man ' 

 as evidence of the former presence of glaciers in the Lake District of England. 



I attribute the freshness of the rock-surface and its striations to the fact 

 that, when the ground was being cleared for the foundations of the modern 

 church which occupies a site here, it was partially covered by a coating of 

 boulder clay or moraine matter, by which the surface was protected from 

 atmospheric waste and erosion.' This covering was probably removed, leaving 

 bare the rock, which, owing to its peculiar form, was left undisturbed. Con- 

 sidering that steps should be taken with a view to the preservation of this 

 natural monument, I consulted the Rev. J. Hawkeswith, vicar of the parish, 

 who promised to consider the possibility of effecting this object. These 

 memorials of the Glacial Period are yearly disappearing. Boulders and erratic 

 blocks are being broken up for building purposes; moraines are being cleared 

 away or laid down In pasture-land, or for agriculture or building ; and the striae 

 and grovings of the rock-surfaces are being covered over or worn down by traffic. 

 It is, therefore, of great importance that their presence should be recorded on 

 maps, or that their remains should, as far as possible, be preserved intact. 



5. The Shelly Moraine of the Sefstrbm Glacier, Spitsbergen, and its 

 Teachings. By G. W. Lamplttgh, F.R.S. 



The Sefstrom Glacier when first ma]iped by Professor De Geer in 1882 had 

 its sea-front two or three miles back within its side-valley, and was flanked on 

 both sides by fluvio-glacial outwash plains. Between that time and 1896, when 

 it was again examined by Professor De Geer, it had advanced about four miles, 

 burying the outwash plains, filling its valley up to the mountain slopes, and 

 bulging out into Ekman Bay in a broad lobe that reached across to Cora Island, 

 hardly a mile from the opposite shore of the bay. But already in 1896 it was 

 sinking back; and when visited in 190S. though its detached "snout still hung 

 grounded on Cora Island amid huge masses of morainic material, the main front 

 had so far receded Hint there was again a sea-passage between it and the island, 

 and a narrow strait, with ice-cliffs to right and left, between the new front and 

 the detached portion affixed to the island. Since then there has been further 

 recession, so that this year (1910) we found a wider passage ; but a remnant of the 

 melting snout still shone up conspicuously amid the red moraine on Cora Island. 



In its original condition Cora Island was a low spit about two miles long and 

 half a mile or more wide, composed of Carboniferous limestone partly covered 

 with raised beach; but it has been increased to more than twice its size by the 

 moraine banked upon its western side during its invasion by the glacier. This 

 moraine, which for the greater part must have been actually under the ice at its 

 maximum, has been thrown in a tumultuous succession of ridges and hollows 



1 The boulder clay can be seen resting on the rock alongside a footpath on 

 the north side of the churchyard. 



