COK^iR-ESIPOTsrnDZEITCE!. 95 



THE SETTLE CAVE DEPOSITS. 



SiE, — Mr. Tiddeman's descrijjtion of the older deposits in the 

 Victoria Cave at Settle encourages me to ask him through your 

 pages kindly to consider whether the laminated glacial clay that he 

 has so well made out, as occurring between the upper cave earth 

 and the bone-bed with the older cave mammals, may not be an 

 indication of that last glacial period which I have so often advocated 

 in your pages ; but without the success in drawing attention to the 

 subject which I could wish.^ 



It is plain from Mr. Tiddeman's paper, "On the Ice-sheet in 

 North Lancashire," that the term which I gave to the moraine 

 profonde of that particular period, viz. " Trail," has reached his 

 ears ; but I doubt if he has read my papers : otherwise he would 

 not have applied the term to '• a subaerial drag" or "trail " of soft 

 heds to a lower level, under the softening and loosening influences 

 of rain and frost,^ and argued for a glacial origin of a phenomenon 

 which I have always maintained lias that origin. 



The particular reason which induces me to suspect that the 

 laminated clay of the Settle Cave belongs to the period of the 

 " Trail " is because it occupies the right position in time, as being 

 subsequent to the Cave Mammals. I have shown that that deposit 

 is none other than the river gravels, which contain the same fauna as 

 the caves. I must confess that I do not quite understand what date' 

 Mr. Tiddeman assigns to the ice-sheet which he has described. I 

 have not had time to read his paper in the Journal so carefully as I 

 could wish, but I perceive that in that paper, as well as in the 

 Magazine, he uses the expression, "The Glacial Period." One is 

 inclined to ask, "Which?" There is a remarkable passage in Mr. 

 Dawkins's paper on the " Classification of Pleistocene Strata," which 

 strongly in my opinion supports my view of this late ice-sheet, and 

 also that the laminated clay of the Settle cave belongs to it. It is 

 that in which he insists on the magnitude of the interval between the 

 late Pleistocene and the Prehistoric ages in Britain, during which 

 nineteen species disappeared, and five at least became extinct.^ 



Hahlton Rectory, near Cambridge. 0. Fisher. 



By the death of Mr. John Bolton, of Sedgwick Cottage, Swarth- 

 moor, near Ulverstone, the geology of Furness has sustained a great 

 loss, and palaeontology a most enthusiastic collectoi'. His passion 

 for fossils originated in 1795, when a child of seven years old, 

 from sauntering, near an excavation for a well in the Mountain 

 Limestone of Urswick Green, where he observed and obtained 

 the stems and separate joints of Encrinites, the "fairy cheeses" and 

 " queer things " of his playfellows. From this date his interest in 

 Nature never seems to have flagged, notwithstanding that he was 

 two years later sent to a weaving-shed in Ulverstone, and after- 

 wards to Barnsley, where he effected an important improvement 



1 Geol. Mag., Vol. III. p. 483; Vol. IV. p. 194; Vol. VIII. p. 65, etc., etc. 



2 Journal of Geol. Soc. vol. xxviii. pp. 480, 482. 



3 Geol. Journ. vol. xxviii. p. 414. 



