188 report— 1878. 



The limestone fell immediately west of Kendal, which ends in the fine 

 escarpments known as Scout and Cunswick Scars, overlooking a broken 

 foreground of Upper Silurian rocks to the Lake Mountains in the distance, 

 is singularly free from limestone boulders. This is only what might be 

 expected, as it is the extreme north end of the limestone area ; for 

 this fell is plentifully strewn with large boulders of Upper Silurian rock, 

 and small ones of volcanic rocks, though there are a few large boulders 

 of volcanic rock as well ; for instance, one well-glaciated boulder of 

 volcanic ash about a mile and a half S.W. of Kendal, and a large one 

 above Cunswick Scar, near the footpath to Kendal. 



Whitbarrow, too (another bare limestone fell), is generally free of 

 limestone boulders, except at the south end, where there are several large 

 ones ; but Silurian boulders are pretty generally distributed over it, and 

 amongst these one large boulder of ash deserves notice. This boulder, 

 which is a tolerably conspicuous object on the fell, is situated on the 

 western side of the fell, perhaps a mile or better S.W. of Row. It is 

 about six feet high, and is split in two, the inner surface of one portion 

 corresponding to that of the other. But the southern portion has been 

 moved away from its fellow, slightly on the western side, but as much as 

 several feet (five or six) on the east ; the general result being motion from 

 north to south. One might fancy that the boulder was originally split as it 

 fell off the end of the ice, and that subsequently the ice had shoved one part 

 slightly away from the other. Connected with boulders is the difficult 

 subject of the accumulation of drift. For a geologist who has a day to 

 spare at Kendal no more instructive walk can be recommended than this. 

 Walk out along the Kendal and Sedbergh road for about five or six miles 

 till you come to the summit level, 930 feet above sea, then tarn south 

 acoss the fell called New Hutton Common to its summit, 1097 feet high. 

 Looking S.W. from this point yon will see spread out before you in the 

 Gatebeck and Saint Sunday Valleys, a tumultuous assemblage of mounds, 

 a truly wonderful sight. These mounds are the vast moraine, or system 

 of moraines, which the great glacier, or ice sheet if you will, of old threw 

 down in the low ground between Helm on the right and the uplands on 

 the left, ending in Scout Hill. 



And if anyone wishes to see moraines of the ordinary Swiss type, shed 

 by local glaciers, let him go to the recesses of the mountains to the head of 

 Long Sleddale ; there in one of the finest dales of the lake country, though 

 one but rarely visited — he will see plenty such. 



Mr. D. Mackintosh reports some new facts relative to the derivation of 

 boulders already discovered by members of the Committee, the existence 

 of several large boulders previously unrecorded, aud the extent to which 

 Ireland has sent erratics into England. 



In our Report for 1875 there is a full account of many large blocks of 

 felspathic rock in the neighbourhood of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. I 

 have principally examined them between Catsbill and Hagley, in a district 

 from which granite would appear to be entirely absent. From a com- 

 parison of their shape, size, appeai'ance of weathered surface and internal 

 structure as revealed by chips, I have no doubt whatever that these 

 boulders are what may be called an overshot load from the great Arenig 

 stream of erratics which has found its way through Llangollen Vale into 

 the central plain of England, and which has left large blocks about Chirk 

 and Welsh Frankton (west of Ellesmere). In our Report for 1876 there is 

 an account of the Arenig dispersion, and the enormous Cefn felstone 



