350 B. Mackintosh — Dispersion of Shapf ell Boulders. 



transported the boulders in a northerly direction must have had its 

 western boundary. 



About a mile south of Shap, 5 or 6 feet in thickness of grey or 

 greyish-brown " pinel," nearly as hard as rock, may be seen lying 

 on Carboniferous limestone. It is rudely laminated, and contains 

 many stones and boulders, including a large per-centage of Wasdale 

 Hill granite. It is covered with a thin bed of red or foxy-coloured 

 loam and loamy clay, with comparatively few stones. This was the 

 first though not the most convincing indication I saw of what I 

 expected, namely, that the Wasdale Hill boulders are " a part and 

 parcel " of the pinel or mountain boulder-clay (for it is not to be 

 found far away from the mountains) of the Lake District. Further 

 on, I saw a block of granite on the roadside, about 12 feet in average 

 diameter, and Mr. Hetherington, of the Shap Granite Company, 

 informed me that he had seen a block high up on the side of a 

 neighbouring hill, which measured 20 x 15 X 5 feet. He likewise 

 mentioned that he had seen a large block horizontally fractured, as if 

 it had violently struck against another block or the rocky bottom of 

 the sea. I afterwards saw several split blocks. 



Near the Polishing "Works, Shap Summit, a yellowish-brown pinel, 

 so hard that it might appropriately be called Post-tertiary conglo- 

 merate, makes its appearance on the roadside. Here (as elsewhere) 

 it is often covered with a facing of the overlying loose loam, and 

 might easily escape the notice of one not in search of it, although it 

 constitutes the main part of the drift of the district. 



At the Polishing Works my attention was directed to the fact, that 

 on some of the higher eminences to the north-east there are many 

 granite boulders on the slopes facing Wasdale Hill, but none on 

 their tops. Should it be found that on none of the eminences to the 

 north and north-east of Wasdale Hill are there any boulders at a 

 greater height than 900 or 1,000 feet above the sea, it would favour 

 the supposition that at the time when the boulders were floated in 

 these directions the land had not been so deeply submerged as when 

 the transportation over Stainmore Pass occurred. At the latter 

 period, the land must have been submerged to a greater depth than 

 1,400 feet, and during an intermediate submergence of about 1,300 

 feet the boulders may have found their way, nearly in the direction 

 of the Shap and Kenda Eoad, into the valley of the Kent. The 

 courses of the ice- and boulder-laden currents may have changed as 

 the land became more deeply submerged. That the boulders did not 

 find their way over lower gaps in the Pennine chain to the south of 

 Stainmore can, I think, be easily explained, on the supposition that 

 currents embracing Wasdale Hill or its neighbourhood, in their 

 course, did not happen to flow through these gaps. There are many 

 directions besides those in which these gaps are situated, which 

 would appear to have never been traversed by currents laden with 

 Shap granite boulders.^ 



On walking along the tramway-cutting from Shap summit to the 



^ According to Mr. Green, of the Gaol. Survey, there is a Shap granite boulder in 

 the village of Eoyston, near Barnsley, and according to the Kev. J. Stanley Tute, 



