C. E. de Ranee — Glaciations of the Lake District. 113 



where the curve is strongest the level is 500 feet, the bottom of the 

 gorge being nearly 40 feet beneath ; at the bottom, where it flows 

 into the Derwent alluvium, it is about 350 feet, the slope of the 

 stream having exceeded the slope of the ground by less than one 

 degree. To produce this small gorge vertical denudations of the 

 bed and longitudinal denudation of the banks has alone taken place, 

 sufficient time not having elapsed for horizontal denudation of the 

 banks, producing an alluvial plain, as has been the case with the 

 valley of the Derwent; it is therefore probable that this gorge, 

 unlike that of Borrodale, had no pre-glacial existence, and has been 

 entirely formed since the emergence of the country from the glacial 

 sea, and after the slope in which it is cut had obtained its rounded 

 contours, and probably even after the glaciers of the second period 

 had disappeared, though no doubt a small glacier passed down 

 Hanse Gill over the line of the present stream, and connected itself 

 with the Borrodale glacier of the second period. 



Bosthwaite to Stake Fass. — A little above the village of Stone- 

 thwaite, the Beck of that name receives a small brook, flowing out 

 of Dock Tarn (1,322 feet) on Watendlath Fell. The cliffs on either 

 side of the Beck are glaciated, and the ice appears to have nearly 

 covered the Fell, and to have fallen bodily over the cliffs over which 

 the Beck now finds its way. Between these Borrodale Fells and 

 the Wythburn Fells to the east the surface of the ground is an 

 undulating depression, with peaks rising here and there, divided by 

 cols, none of which (between Borrodale and Wythburn) are more 

 than from 1,550 to 1,600 feet in height. The ice during the first 

 glaciation would appear to have occupied the whole of these Fells 

 up to that level, and thence poured downwards into the above-men- 

 tioned valleys by the various small ravines, and occasionally, as in 

 the present case, descending over the cliffs forming the limits of the 

 great valleys, in the lower portions of which the ice would appear 

 to have steadily flowed northwards in those valleys lying north of 

 the circular watershed, and southwards in those lying on the south, 

 as Windermere and Coniston Valleys, Eskdale and Wast Water 

 Valley, scooping in many instances the great rock-basins, now 

 occupied by lakes, at the points of greatest pressure. In the bottom 

 of Stonethwaite Beck Valley traces of this glaciation are observable 

 in the woods on the south bank, where the rocks are moutonneed, and 

 scored in the direction of Greenup Gill, down which a glacier 

 flowed joining that from Longstrath Beck ; the scored rocks are at 

 an elevation of about 440 feet. At the point where the two latter 

 Becks join, the rocks are rounded ; and where a rude bridge crosses 

 Longstrath Beck the rock is cut through, almost appearing as if a 

 rocky barrier had stretched across the mouth of the valley, and that 

 the rock bottom sloped upwards towards it, being a small rock-basin, 

 once probably occupied by a lake. Following the lines of Long- 

 strath, it is found to be an insignificant brook, wandering through a 

 narrow alluvial plain, bounded on either side by steep cliffs. At 

 the foot of these, but especially on the east side, there are sloping 

 masses of Drift, partly the result of falls from above, but in great 



VOL. VIII. — NO. LXXXI. 8 



