D. Mackintosh — The Drifts of the Lake District. 307 



about two miles in length. At the northern end this post-marine 

 lateral moraine (for such evidently it is) rises up to about 300 feet 

 above the bottom of the valley. At the lower end it descends nearly 

 to the bottom of the valley. N. of it, and at a higher level, there 

 are numerous rocky scarps from which a shallow glacier may have 

 collected the blocks. But they may have been partly derived from 

 the tributary glacier which once evidently came down through Sea- 

 thwaite tarn cwm, which left many perched blocks on the platform in 

 front of the cwm, and finally deposited the small irregular moraine 

 which, with solid rock at intervals, dams back the water of the tarn. 



Notes on the Drifts of Furness. — I have described these drifts in 

 the Quart. Joum. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv., and would here very briefly 

 state the results of a second series of observations. The greatest 

 masses of yellowish-brown pinel I have yet encountered are near 

 Lindal, at a height of about 300 feet above the sea. They reach a 

 thickness of about 120 feet, and, at a lower level, a still greater 

 thickness is said to have been proved. It resembles the pinel which 

 runs under the sea on the E. coast of Furness, and is evidently on 

 the same horizon with the Lower stony Boulder-clay of Blackpool. 

 In Furness we find what may be called the central and maximum 

 development of this formation, and it graduates northwards into the 

 pinel of the Coniston Old Man (which, on the Walna Scar road, 

 rises to a height of at least 1200 feet above the sea), and southwards 

 into the more sedimentary Lower Boulder-clay of Lancashire. In 

 no part of the N.W. of England, so far as I have seen, is there any 

 appearance of a line of demarcation between the pinel of the hill- 

 slopes and the adjacent recesses and valleys, and the Lower Boulder- 

 clay of the plains. The erratic boulders in the pinel at Lindal, 

 Ulverstone Eailway Station, the sea-coast near Bardsea, etc., would 

 appear to have come in straight or curved lines from Millom Hill, 

 and the slopes thence stretching Northwards to Duddon Bridge. 



Dispersion around Hill-hases and up Valleys. — Beaches of pinel 

 curve round the small hills and run up the small valleys N. and 

 N.N.E. of Ulverstone. Most of the imbedded boulders are local, 

 but a few, consisting of porphyry, would appear to have come from 

 the W. side of the Duddon valley. It is difficult to conceive of their 

 having come in a straight line over the elevated intervening hilly 

 district, and no similar erratics, so far as I am aware, are to be found 

 on the higher plateaux or passes of this district. We may, therefore, 

 infer that these boulders wei'e floated round by way of Ireleth, 

 stranded on the jutting sea shores near Ulverstone, and carried up 

 the small valleys by ice-laden flow-tides or wind-currents. But the 

 lateral or up-valley dispersion of portions of drift diverted from the 

 borders of great ice-laden currents has been a common and not 

 merely an exceptional occurrence in the N.W. of England.- 



^ In E. Lancashire, along the boundary of the great North-western drift, boulders 

 have found their way into valleys lying at nearly right angles to the general course 

 of the drift. Far up in the narrow valley called Swineshaw, near Staley Bridge, 

 there are many stones of Eskdale granite and Wastdale granilite which reach a 

 height of 900 feet above the sea. They are associated with stones which must have 

 come from various points of the compass. 



