Professor J. W. Gregory — The English " Eskers ". 33 



revisited the district to reconsider the impressions of previous 

 visits. 



The main road from York to Selby traverses the Fulford-Escrick 

 band. The pits show gravel with waterworn boulders of 

 Carboniferous rocks and pebbles of vein quartz, black chert, purple 

 quartzite, and some green felspar-porphyry similar to that of the 

 Lake District. Some of the boulders show flattened surfaces, but 

 I saw none with glacial striae. The gravel shows no osar-like cross 

 banding. The freshest section seen on my last visit exposed six feet 

 of horizontally bedded sands, interbedded with four layers of 

 gravel. In some of the pits the predominant constituent is sand. 



The material is typical fluvioglacial sand and gravel ; it is 

 part of a thin sheet and does not form a conspicuous ridge. The 

 slopes are very gentle. Thus the road from Deighton Grove 

 towards Wheldrake starts at the height of 35 feet O.D. ; and the 

 variations from that level recorded by the 6 in. map are as follows : 

 At 700 feet + 3 feet ; at 2,800 feet + 6 feet ; at 5,600 feet, at Pool 

 Bridge, — 9 feet ; the road rises from this stream -to — 2 feet. West 

 of the York-Escrick road the land sinks in a gradual slope to the 

 Ouse, which there flows at the level of 26 feet O.D., so that the 

 descent is only from 10 to 20 feet. There seems accordingly no 

 evidence either from internal structure or surface relief to refer 

 the Fulford-Escrick band to the class of osar. It is one of several 

 remnants of a sheet of gravel, the widespread range of which is 

 indicated by the patches at Naburn and elsewhere, and by those 

 marked on the Geological Survey drift maps by blue dots. 



The band of sand, gravel, and boulder clay between Escrick 

 and Wheldrake, which has been identified as the outer moraine, 

 though somewhat more conspicuous than that from Fulford to 

 Escrick, is a low, broad rise. Its height is about 30 feet above 

 the adjacent plain ; its slopes are gentle and it shows neither the 

 humpiness characteristic of moraines, nor the steep sides of 

 Ivames. I saw on it no large erratics. It appears to be a rise 

 left by denudation. This view agrees with that of Professor Bonney, 

 who, in his Presidential Address to the British Association {Rep. 

 Brit. Assoc, 1910, p. 26), concludes that " the so-called moraines 

 near York ... do not, in my opinion, show any important difference 

 in outline from ordinary hills of sands and gravels, and their 

 materials are wholly unlike those of any iiadubitable moraines 

 that I have either seen or studied in photographs ". 



The bands of gravel between Fulford and Escrick and between 

 Escrick and Wheldrake do not belong to the category of kames or 

 osar. 



4. E. and S.E. YorksJiire.^An " esker-like " ridge, resting on the 

 Upper Boulder Clay in Stanghow Moor, Eskdale,^ occurs on the 

 flanks of the Cleveland Hills. Better developed eskers have been 



1 Mem. Geol. Surv., 104 S.W., S.E., 1888, p. 67. 

 VOL. LIX. — NO. I. 3 



