C. E. de Ranee — Glaciations of the Lake District. 115 



middle of the Glacial epoch, which ushered in the Middle Drift 

 period, it is clear that the sea of that period never reached so high. 

 This coincides with the fact that Middle Drift occurs at elevations 

 always below that level ; thus that at Macclesfield and at Moel 

 Tryfaen reach but 1,200 and 1,350 feet respectively, and the new 

 sections described by Mr. Mackintosh as discovered by himself and 

 by Mr. Ward, at Coniston and at Trout Beck, reach but 1,000 feet. 

 There is therefore little doubt but that during the greatest sub- 

 mergence of the Middle Drift period, the land in the north-west of 

 England and north of Wales never sank more than 1,400 feet be- 

 low its present level. 



Stake Pass to Dungeon Gill. — At the head of Langdale Valley, 

 below Stake Pass, a remarkably fine moraine occurs, which it is 

 needless for me to describe, as Professor Hull has figured it in his 

 paper " On the Vestiges of Extinct Glaciers in the Lake District of 

 Cumberland and Westmoreland," ^ with which paper I regret I was 

 not acquainted when I wrote my " Notes on the Surface-Geology" 

 of the district in 1869 ; for in it he describes in detail the old 

 glaciers of Windermere, Grasmere, and Grisedale, alluded to in my 

 own. He also describes in this paper Great and Little Langdale, 

 Stockdale, and Patterdale, and gives the figure of the fine glaciated 

 rock behind St. Mary's Church, which has been transferred to the 

 pages of the " Antiquity of Man." He also gives it as his opinion 

 that glaciers descended as low as 500 or 600 feet, after the retreat 

 of the sea, and that the Drift sea ascended as high as 1,000 feet, a 

 result which in the latter case further investigations have merely 

 proved to be true. He also was, I think, the first to distinguish 

 between the Moraine and the Marine Drifts of the- Lake District, and 

 to show why the former descend so low, and yet the latter ascend 

 so high. 



Below the great moraine at the foot of Eosset Gill, fragments 

 of still larger moraines remain above Dungeon Gill, especially a 

 large one on the north bank before reaching Middle Fell Place, 

 which is covered with erratic perched Boulders, resembling on a 

 small scale the great moraine mound at Blaen-y-nant, in the Pass of 

 Llanberis, described by Prof. Kamsay, F.E.S.^ 



Dungeon Gill to Chapel Stile. — From the alluvial plain of Great 

 Langdale Beck immediately below the hotel rise many fine exam- 

 ples of roches moutonnees, the long axes being in the direction of the 

 valley ; another fine example occurs at Thrang, in a garden below 

 Chapel Stile Church; the striations here are very distinct,^ the primary 

 scores pointing ivp the valley. Between these two points glacial 

 rubbish is seen at several points, in one resting upon shattered slates. 



Chapel Stile to Coniston. — In this district my opportunities of 

 examination were small, but it would appear that the glaciers of the 

 second epoch in this area exerted but little effect in scooping out 



1 Edin. New Phil. Journ. ^ " Ancient Glaciers of North Wales." 



3 Being nearly as good as those I observed on the east bank of the foot of Lyn 



Lydaw (N. Wales), near the bridge over the lake, which are certainly the freshest 



looking of any in that district, or in the Lake District. 



