Professor J. W. Gregory — lite Engl isJt " Eskers". 41 



faulted by the melting of included ice, and as containing " beautifully 

 laminated " mud. He describes it as built up of a series of semi- 

 cones deposited by a sub-glacial river, which came from the N. and 

 discharged into a sheet of water near the ice margin (ibid., p. 30, 33). 

 Transverse to the main ridge are several kames (ibid., p. 32). The 

 level of this formation is from 200-75 feet above sea level. The 

 valley in which it lies was preglacial (ibid., p. 35). 



Professor Boulton's account of this formation gives the first 

 proof of English osar. Mr. E. E. L. Dixon has kindly informed 

 me of some branching gravel ridges which he is investigating at 

 Newport, Shropshire, and of which he will publish a description 

 shortly. He describes the series as branching and each branch 

 as becoming alternately wider and narrower ; and this moniliform 

 character combined with other features indicates that these 

 formations are also osar. Professor Boulton tells me that they 

 belong to the same series as that of Kingswinford. 



Midland eskers have been recorded from the Longmynd, where 

 they are said to occur to the height of 900 feet on the N.E. flank ; 

 N.W. of Buildwas and Strethill ^ ; near Oswestry, as A. C. Nicholson ^ 

 has called the Gloppa shell beds " a ridge of eskers " 1,000 yards 

 long ; and irregularities like esker mounds rise from beneath the 

 " unbedded drift " (interglacial) near Eour Oaks, 6 miles S. of 

 Lichfield, and near Hopwas, W.N.W. of Tamworth.^ I have not 

 visited these formations except at Gloppa, which on my visit was 

 enveloped in so thick a mist that I could see practically nothing 

 of the field relations of the shell-bearing sands. 



The Midland records relate to localities in the area containing 

 morainic drift. To the S. and E. of that area there are no kames ; 

 for example, the gravels of the Malvern district, according to 

 J. Gray,^ are preglacial. 



X. Welsh Eskers. 

 1. N. Wales. — On the mainland of N. Wales the best-known 

 formations referred to as eskers are in Flintshire around Mold. 

 Some curvilinear banks of shell-bearing sand and gravel were there 

 described by Mackintosh ^ as " sand-eskers ". He recorded them 

 to heights of 800 feet above sea level near Brynford, and of 950 feet 

 at Moel-y-Crio. They and other examples have been also described 

 by Sir Aubrev Strahan,*^ who refers to numerous eskers and describes 

 (op. cit., p. 139) that at the height of 982 feet on Moel-y-Crio, S.W. 

 of Halkin, as " the most conspicuous in all this part of Wales ". 

 It contains shell fragments. Most of these eskers are at low levels 

 along the valleys, such as Bailey Hill in Mold ; at Hartsheath in 



1 Gcol Assoc, Geol. in Field, pp. 764-5. 



' Q..J.G.S., xlviii, 1892. p. 86. 



3 Mem. Geol. Surv., 154, 1919, p. 179. 



* Proc. Birmingham Nat. Hist. Soc. xiii, 1914, p. 17. 



5 Proc. Geol. Soc. Liverpool, iv, 1883, p. 361. 



6 Mem. Geol. Surv., 79 S.E., 1890, pp. 130, 13], 135, 137, 139, 142. 



