88 Reports and Proceedings. 



TIL— January 7th, 1874. Prof. Kamsay, V.P.E.S., Yice-President, 

 in the Chair. The following communications were read : — 



1. "TheOriginof some of the Lake-basins of Cumberland." First 

 Paper. By J. Clifton Ward, Esq., RG.S., Assoc. E.S.M. 



After referring to the fact that the question of the origin of lake- 

 basins cannot be satisfactorily discussed unless the depth of the 

 lakes and the heights of the mountains are brought before the 

 mind's eye in their natural proportions, the author sketched out the 

 physical geography of the lakes under discussion (Derwentwater, 

 Bassenthwaite, Buttermere, Crummock, and Lowes water), and 

 pointed out what must have been their original size and shape 

 before they were filled up to the extent they now are. These lakes 

 were not moraine-dammed, but true rock-basins. The belief that 

 the present Lake-district scenery was the result of the sculpturing 

 of atmospheric powers, such as we see now in operation, varied by 

 climatal changes and changes in the height of the district above the 

 sea, was enforced, and the opinion given that the work of elabora- 

 tion of the lake-country scenery has been going on ever since Car- 

 boniferous or pre-Carboniferous times. The lake-hollows repre- 

 sented almost the last rock-shavings removed by Nature's tools. 

 What were the special tools producing these hollows ? There being 

 no evidence of their production by marine action or by running 

 water, since they do not lie in synclinal troughs, nor along lines of 

 Assuring and faulting, and cannot be supposed to be special areas of 

 depression, it remained to see how far Professor Eamsay's theory 

 accounted for their origin. The course of the old Borrowdale 

 glacier was then fully traced out, and the power the numerous 

 tributary glaciers had of helping to urge on the ice over the long 

 extent of flat ground from Seathwaite to the lower end of Bassen- 

 thwaite Lake, commented on. The same was done with regard to 

 the Buttermere and Ireton glacier, and the depths of the lakes, 

 width and form of the valleys, and thickness of the ice shown by 

 numerous transverse and longitudinal sections drawn to scale. 

 When all the evidence was considered — the fact of the lake-hollows 

 under examination being but long shallow troughs, the thickness 

 of the ice which moved along the valleys in which the lakes now 

 lie, the agreement of the deepest parts of the lakes with the points 

 at which, from the confluence of several ice-streams and the nar- 

 rowing of the valley, the onward pressure of the ice must have been 

 greatest, — the conclusion was arrived at that Prof. Eamsay's theory 

 was fully supported by these cases, and that the immediate cause of 

 the present lake-basins was the onward movement of the old 

 glaciers, ploughing up their beds to this slight depth. It was 

 pointed out that since the general form of the Buttermere and 

 Crummock valley was that of a round-bottomed basin, as seen in 

 transverse section, the effect of the ice was merely a slight deepen- 

 ing of the basin or the formation of a smaller basin of similar 

 form at the bottom of the larger ; whereas in the case of the Der- 

 wentwater and Bassenthwaite valley, which in transverse section 

 was a wide flat-bottomed pan, the action was to form long shallow 



