Bonney — Glacial Action near Llandudno, 291 



(6) The undulating outlines of the chain of the Little Ormeshead 

 are also strongly suggestive of glacial action, and upon that hill are 

 two shallow but well-marked valleys, whose contours can, I think, 

 be due to no other cause. One of these is on its western face, and is 

 clearly seen from the neighbourhood of Llandudno (Plate XII. Fig. 1). 

 It is enclosed by two low ridges ; one of these falls rapidly down to 

 the conspicuous gap which isolates the Little Ormeshead from the 

 rest of the range ; the other, descending seawards, ultimately forms a 

 broken face of rock. The peculiar curves of these ridges and of 

 their inner slopes, with the form of the bed of the valley, which in 

 the upper part is scarcely masked by a thin turf, can only be ex- 

 plained by the action of a glacier. Nor is this all : about the lower 

 third of the hill is covered by drift, the rock disappearing under a 

 sloping bed of it, which sweeps gently down towards the west. The 

 sea has eaten away a large portion of the northern side of this, and 

 formed cliffs which, in places, cannot be less than 50 feet high. If 

 we proceed along the shore to the place where this drift rests upon 

 the limestone, we find that the latter forms a steep cliif or rapid 

 broken descent, which still preserves the rounded contour indicative 

 of ice-action. In the upper part of the clay cliff, a bed of large 

 angular boulders, all apparently of limestone, is now exposed a few 

 feet below the surface of the ground. This thins out on each side, 

 and appears to be thickest in the part nearest to the middle line of 

 the above-named valley. It was quite impossible to reach this bed, 

 but its greatest thickness cannot be less than seven feet, and it bears a 

 very close resemblance to a moraine. The clay below also contains 

 many chert fragments, and boulders most of which are limestone, 

 the rest trap and various metamorphic rocks from the district west 

 of the Conway. One good sized trap boulder was resting in the clay, 

 a dozen feet or so above the shore,, almost in contact with the lime- 

 stone rock. The land slips have made it difficult to examine the 

 lower part of this cliff, but a little further on to the west a good section 

 is exposed, which exhibits below the surface soil : (1) red clay, with 

 but few pebbles or boulders ; (2) a rather darker clay, containing 

 large limestone boulders, but slightly water- worn, and many pebbles 

 and boulders of limestone, trap, and metamorphic rocks ; (3) a bluer 

 clay, containing many small pebbles of slaty rocks. In many places 

 the lime in (2) has cemented it into a hard conglomerate. Measure- 

 ments were impossible owing to the steepness and wetness of the 

 cliff. I did not find shells in any of these clays.^ Again, on the 

 southern face of the Little Ormeshead, a valley may be seen, which 

 descends towards the marshy valley leading to Colwyn Bay, with 

 contours, if possible, more suggestive of glacier action, and ap- 

 parently with a similar clay in its lower part. A valley of the same 

 kind may also be observed in the north-western part of the range, 

 from the road between Khos and Llandudno ; and the new road from 



^ It may be worth mentioning that the great curving joints which seam the northern 

 cliffs of the Little Ormeshead and contribute largely to their graceful outlines, present 

 remarkably fine instances of slickensides. They can be examined from the shore when 

 the tide is out. 



