]16 C. E. de Ranee — Glaciations of the Lake District. 



the Marine Drift, the surface of the ground up to about 800 feet 

 being much as it was left by the Upper Boulder-clay sea, to which 

 age I refer the loamy stony drift below Arnside ; lower a small 

 glacier flowed west from Low Tarn to High Yewdale, where it 

 joined a glacier which, both in the first and second glaciations, flowed 

 down Yewdale Beck, from Tilberthwaite. 



Coniston to Greenodd. — Coniston water, like all the great lakes of 

 the district, lies in a rock-basin, the glacier which formed it (in the 

 age preceding the submergence) reaching to a height of at least 

 150 feet above the present surface of the water. 



Every small island, as in Windermere and Grasmere, is a roche 

 moutonnee, as is the rock at the foot of the lake on which the hotel is 

 built, from the windows of which, a view of the entire lake is seen 

 running along the exact centre measured from east to west ; this rock 

 was therefore the southern abutment of the Coniston Grlacier, behind 

 which the great scooping power was exerted, though to a certain 

 extent this must have been exercised in the valley lower down, as 

 the rock is rounded on the south side as well as on the north ; but 

 the traces of Moraine Drift in the valley of the Crake have been 

 obliterated by marine action, which has overspread the country with 

 a representative of the Upper Till of the south ; this is particularly 

 well seen at Lowick Green, and to a less extent on the slopes above 

 Spark Green. The glacier of the second age, though it reached the 

 head of Coniston lake, and probably shed its terminal moraine in the 

 middle of it, evidently never reached the foot, and thus the Marine 

 Drift of the valley of the river Crake is now undisturbed, though, 

 possibly, detailed examination may discover the traces of small 

 glaciers which have occupied its tributary becks. 



Looking at the facts I have observed in the Lake District, Lanca- 

 shire, and Cheshire, I think it probable — (1) That before the Glacial 

 epoch the land stood further out of the sea ; that denudation of cliffs 

 took place, accompanied with subsidence. (2) That while this was 

 going on the climate became colder, and the Glacial period com- 

 menced ; the undulating strips of plain between the various valleys 

 became covered with ice, which in time forced its way into them, 

 which then more than half-filled them with an icy stream ; this in 

 course of time scooped out rock-basins in the valley floor beneath, in 

 the manner shown to be the case in North Wales by Prof. Eamsay, 

 r.R.S. (3) That while these gigantic glaciers filled the valleys of 

 the Lake District, small ice-sheets covered the whole of Lancashire 

 up to a height of 1,000 feet and down to the level of 50 feet, form- 

 ing the Terrestrial Lower Boulder-clay, which contains only com- 

 paratively local boulders ; that this clay is therefore synchronous 

 with the Lower Moraine Drift of the Lake District ; that below 

 60 feet the Lowlands of Lancashire and Cheshire were even then 

 (at the close of this episode) under water ; and that probably the 

 feet of many of the great glaciers of the Lake District were also 

 under the sea. That these glaciers brought down to the sea-level, 

 on their surface, lateral moraines, derived from the inland valleys ; 

 which moraines, becoming entangled with the ice surrounding the 



