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



whose land some of them occur explained them as " made for 

 fighting ". The southernmost of the series is cut through by the 

 railway just N. of Kellet Bridge ; it follows the railway as a sinuous 

 and in places wooded ridge, 15 feet high ; there is no clear section, 

 but the abundance of boulders is proved by the occurrence of thirty 

 in one group S.E. of Alpha House. The nature of the material' 

 exposed on the surface and thrown out from rabbit burrows is 

 glacieluvial. 



The close association of these formations with ice is shown by 

 an excellent section through one ridge in a gravel pit N. of the 

 High Keer Bridge on the road from Kellet to Burton. This section 

 is 15 feet high, and it shows three layers ; the lowest, exposed on 

 the E. side, is gravel with a base of brown loam ; above this is a bed 

 crowded with large well-washed boulders (up to 3 feet in diameter) ; 

 this boulder bed is covered by gravel. This section may be explained 

 by the deposition first of a low bed of gravel in front of a glacier ; 

 a re-advance of the ice led to the depositioD of the large boulders, 

 which were covered by gravel when the ice again retreated. The 

 Kellet Bridge ridges are not osar, as they show neither seasonal 

 banding or fluvioglacial action. They are glacieluvial kames 

 deposited along the edge of ice which apparently came from the 

 N.E., and spread over the low ground of the Keer valley and ended 

 on its S. slope. 



VII. Isle op Man. 



Opposite Carnforth, at the N. end of the Isle of Man a line of 

 high kames known as the Bride Hills, trends E. and W. across 

 the island. They have been described by Lamplugh.^ 



VIII. S.W. Lancashiee and Cheshire. 

 A mound of " esker drift " at Pickering Castle, N.E. of Chorley, 

 has been mentioned by de Ranee. ^ The sand ridges on the Cheshire 

 plain at Beeston and near Delamere, have been regarded as eskers.^ 

 From the account by G. H. Morton ^ these beds belong to the 

 " Middle Glacial ", and he describes them as having evidently 

 originated as sand-banks. Those which I have seen are residual 

 banks left by the denudation of the interglacial sands. 



IX. The Midlands. 

 A number of especially interesting " eskers " have been described 

 from the Western Midlands. Professor Boulton ® has piiblished an 

 instructive account of an example near Kingswinford which extends 

 for 4 miles on a N.N.W. course, and passes 1 mile N.W. of Stour- 

 bridge. Professor Boulton describes the beds as contorted and as 



1 Geol. I. of Man, 1903, pp. 353-8. 



2 Mem. Geol. Surv., S.W. Lancashire, 1877, p. 44. 



* H. B. Woodward, Geol. England and Wales, p. 490 ; Stralian, Metn. Geol. 

 Surv., 80 S.W., 1882, p. 17. 



* Geol. Country around Liverpool, 1897, pp. 209-10. 



. ^ Proc. Birmingham Nat. Hist. Soc, xiv, 1916, pp. 25-35, pi. v, vi. 



