336 Miss E, Hodgson — The Granite-drift of Furnesk 



to assign to the English glacier, if ever there was one. I infer, 

 therefore, with all due deference to the opinion of those who have 

 assisted me, and to that of others, that the boulders at Eosley, and 

 the angular granite previously noticed, indicate the higher or more 

 southerly edge of a glacier, which, meeting in the plains of the Sol- 

 way, like descents from the Scottish slopes, pressed out westward to 

 the Irish Sea.^ 



■ Mr, Binney, in one of his Memoirs on the Permian Beds of the 

 north-west of JEngland,^ incidentally alludes to the thick covering of 

 drift between Curthwaite and Howrigg (190 to 300 feet elevation) : 

 and he informs me that, with the exception of the valley gravels, he 

 saw little sand or gravel capping the till f so most likely it is true 

 moraine matter down to a low level there, as in Furness. Almost 

 the entire country, namely from Hesket Newmarket towards 

 Eosley, the neighbourhoods of Wigton, Abbey Town, Blencogo, and 

 Mealsgate, have been traversed by Mr. Eccleston, and that observer 

 attests to the prevalence of the Skiddaw type of granite, which he 

 believes may form in places about 85 per cent, of the other debris. He 

 mentions it as singular that there is so little limestone, but the trend 

 westward might obviate that. In railway cuttings near Aspatria, 

 limestone boulders are plentiful ; and, according to Mr. Hodgson, of 

 that place, they are almost invariably covered with deep glacial 

 indentations.* 



Now although detritus from the granite of Criffel, on the opposite 

 ■coast of the Solway, may possibly be undistinguishable from that of 

 Skiddaw ; and although there is in the latter an apparent resem- 

 blance, even to some of the Irish granite ; yet the foregoing should 

 tend to prove, as far as can be without analyses, that Cumberland 

 has furnished, in the main, its own granite drift. It may be sur- 

 mised that drift from more northern sources would pass further west. 



With regard to the granite of Syning-gill, between Saddleback 

 find Skiddaw, briefly noticed both by Mr. Otley and Professor Sedg- 

 wick,^ that rock has been shed southward down the Glenderaterra 

 ravine.^ This highest seen granite must occur in considerable mass, 

 being lately quarried for building stone, of which any quantity, it is 

 'jsaid, can be got; and it would seem also to be accompanied by rocks 



1 See Mr. Binney's paper in Trans. Lit. and Phil. Soc, Manch., vol. x., 1852, 

 where he ascribes the drift-deposits near Blackpool to the conjoint action of Cumber- 

 land glaciers and icebergs, the former " extending from the mountain-sides down into 

 the sea." The grand glaciation on what is now Morecambe Bay, between Bardsey 

 and Aldingham, which I noticed in the " Geologist," 1864, and again more fully de- 

 scribed in the N, L. Mag., 1866, is about 3,200 feet below our greatest altitudes. 



^ Trans. Lit. and Phil. Soc, Manchester, vol. xiv., 1857. 



» Mr. Binney, MS. 



* Messrs. Eccleston and Hodgson, MSS. According to the former, the fellsides and 

 outside pastures are so thickly strewn with boulders that they give immense trouble 

 'to the agriculturists, who in general prefer burying them' below plough-reach to 

 •any other mode of extirpation. 



* " Letters " appended to Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes. 



« The exact position of Syning-gUl was courteously pointed out to me by Mr. J. 

 Crozier, of Biddings, Threlkeld ; as was also that of Brandy-gill, a branch of Grains- 

 gill, near Carrock Fell. See Sketch Map, reduced fi-om the one-inch Ordnance sheet. 



