J. W. Bads — Erratic Boulders of the C alder Valley. 315 



The question at issue is, " How were the erratic boulders trans- 

 ported into the Valley of the Calder ? " There are two sources from 

 which the boulders may have been derived, the one on the western 

 side of the Pennine range of hills dividing Lancashire and Yorkshire, 

 and the other occupying a part of the great plain of the Ouse in the 

 central part of Yorkshire. In all probability the glacial clays, 

 originally containing the boulders, may have had a common origin 

 in the mountainous ranges of Westmoreland, or possibly amongst the 

 mountains of the south of Scotland. Whether one or both these 

 localities served as the source of the glacier, it appears to have 

 passed along the valley of the Eden, grinding against the Crossfell 

 escarpment until it reached the somewhat lower ground of Stainmoor 

 Forest. At this point a part of the glacier was deflected eastwards 

 over hills rising to a height of 1,500 to 1,600 feet above the sea- 

 level into the valleys of the Tees and its tributaries, and also into 

 Arkendale and Swaledale, which are branches from the valley of the 

 Ouse. The glaciers penetrated far down the valleys, and the 

 immense quantities of boulders and till left on their recession 

 testify to their great size and importance. The second portion of the 

 Eden Valley glacier, which did not pass over Stainmoor, continued its 

 course in a southerly direction, and one part of it, filling the valley 

 between Mallerstang and Wild Boar Fell, passed along the district 

 known as Lunds and entered Wensleydale. Mr. J. G. Goodchild * 

 has demonstrated that this glacier must have been 1,600 feet in 

 thickness, and points to numerous evidences of its extent and action 

 in this, and the tributary dales of Snaizeholme Widdale and other 

 streams. The remaining portion passed along the western escarp- 

 ment of the Pennine Chain, and deposited great thicknesses of 

 Boulder-clays in the valleys of Lancashire. Mr. Dakyns is of 

 opinion that the latter is the source whence the " erratics may very 

 well have been washed down out of these glacial beds into the 

 Calder Valley by ordinary rain and river action," and I believe that 

 this opinion is also shared to a great extent by other officers of the 

 Geological Survey. 2 It has already been observed that the sources 

 of the Calder are extended to the Lancashire side of the Pennine 

 Anticlinal, but an inspection of the country drained by it shows that 

 it is surrounded by high hills, with the exception of the two valleys 

 along which the railway lines run north-westwards to Burnley and 

 southwards to Littleborough. The watershed between Burnley 

 and Littleborough is formed by a series of hills rising about 1,400 

 feet above the sea-level, extending from Shieveley Pike and Heald 

 Moor southwards to Tooter Hill and along Trough Edge to the 

 summit near Walsden. Throughout the whole of this district on the 

 Yorkshire side of the watershed, with the exception of a small 

 patch of gravel in Walsden, near the Waggon and Horses public- 

 house, there is no trace of gravel or drift. The beds of the several 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxi. p. 73. 



2 See also " Notes on the Lancashire and Cheshire Drift," hy E. W. Binney, read 

 in 1842, and printed in the Transactions of the Mane. Geol. Soc. vol. viii. part i. 

 page 30 (1869). 



