110 C. E. de Ranee — Glaciations of the Lake District. 



like fringes here and there on the hill-side up to a great elevation ; 

 they are probably left by glaciers which flowed when the level of 

 the rock bottom of the Lingmell Beck gorge was higher than at 

 present, the remainder having been scooped out by later glaciers, 

 which have also helped to deepen the bottom of the valley, the slope 

 of which is far more rapid than that of the head of Borrodale. 

 Moraine matter, sand, and tumultuous heaps of gravel occur on the 

 right bank of Lingmell Beck, under Wasdale Fell, some of them 

 being 50 and 60 feet in height, left by the later glaciers, which do 

 not appear to have reached the lake Wast Water, which lies in a 

 gigantic rock-basin, bounded to the west and north by high sloping 

 mountains, and to the east by steep cliffs, called the Screes, 1,774 

 feet in height, which have every appearance of descending at the 

 same angle beneath the water, which is known to reach a depth of 

 270 feet, or about 80 feet below Trinity high-water mark, the level of 

 the surface of the water being 204 feet above the Ordnance datum line. 

 The surfaces of the Screes are covered with a vast quantity of loose 

 material, the result of the weathering of the cliff, the fragments varying 

 in size from a foot to the eighth of an inch ; it especially occurs near 

 the base dipping under the water, with only a slightly altered angle of 

 repose ; occasionally, at a height of about 350 feet, a ledge of rock 

 crops out, stopping the fall of detritus from above ; at points where 

 the continuity of the ledge is broken, the debris has flowed through 

 the opening, as through a funnel, spreading out into a fan-shaped 

 mass below, marked with curious curves, showing the direction of 

 motion, being first obliquely northwards, then downwards, then at 

 a small angle curving southwards. Taking into consideration that 

 the deepest side of the lake is the eastern, under the Screes Cliff, it 

 appears probable that the ice that scooped out the lake was not only 

 derived from the valleys at its head, but was in part, from an icy 

 stream that poured over the Screes themselves, derived from the 

 imdulating ground surrounding the various peaks of Sea Fell, Green- 

 how, and Eskdale Fell, during the first glaciation. Looking at the 

 general trend of the ground, though valleys occur between Sea Fell 

 and Illgill Head, there is reason to believe that a small ice-sheet 

 would flow west in the direction of Wast Water, and, meeting with 

 the cliffs, would flow over them, adding its immense weight to the 

 glacier already occupying the gorge, derived from the Mosedale and 

 Lingmell valleys, would cause it to exercise an enormous grinding 

 power on that point, causing the central eastern side of the lake to 

 be, as we now find it, the deepest. 



But in the second glaciation the ice does not appear to have moved 

 over the shoulders of the hills from Sea Fell, but to have flowed 

 south into the valleys of Eskdale and the Eiver Mite ; while in 

 the first period, here and elsewhere in the Lake-District, the ice 

 appears to have gathered on all the strips of upland undulating 

 plain surrounding the various peaks, and separating the different 

 valleys, and thence to have radiated in all directions, pouring over 

 cliffs and valley-sides into the gorges and vales below, wherever 

 an indentation or fall in the ground facilitated its flow over the 



