THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. LXXIV.— AUGUST, 1870. 



a^RXG-XJSTJi^Xj ^I^TIOXjES. 



I — On the Dispbesion of Shapfell Bouldees and Oeigin of 



BOULDEE-CLAT. 

 By D. Mackintosh, F.G.S. 



AS the attention of geologists has lately been re-directed to the 

 above subjects by Mr. S. V. Wood^ and Prof. Harkness,* I 

 venture to hope that the following notes and obsei-vations, made 

 during visits to Wasdale Crag and the neighbourhood, on the 7th 

 and 15th of last June, will not prove uninteresting to the readers of 

 the Geological Magazine. 



View of Wasdale Crag from the opposite side of Wasdale. 

 Boulders of granite from Wasdale Crag (or, as it may more con- 

 veniently be called, Wasdale Hill — the Crag being its southern 

 escarpment) may be found down the valley of the Eden at a great 

 distance from their parent rock ; but it is not until one arrives at 

 Shap village, on his journey southwards, that the boulders begin to 

 obtrude themselves on his attention. A little beyond the Greyhound 

 Inn, he will find that at least one-fourth of the stones which have 

 been gathered off the fields are granite, many of the others being a 

 kind of basaltic trap from the neighbourhood of Wasdale Hill. 

 Further on he cannot fail to be struck with the number of huge 

 granite boulders in the roadside walls, some of them angular, but 

 many of them considerably rounded. I have been informed that 

 there are few or no granite boulders much further west than Shap 

 Abbey ; and in this ueighbourhood, therefore, the current which 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. xxvi. p. 90, paper read Dec. 8, 1869. 



^ I -was not present at the reading of Prof. Harkness's paper on the 26th of last 

 May, but from the few lines of abstract in the fortnightly notices of the Geol. Soc, it 

 would appear that, so far as the dispersing action of coast ice is concerned, his views 

 agree with those advocated in this article. 



VOL. VII. — NO. LXXIV. 23 



