D. Mackintosh — Dispersion of Shapfell Boulders. 351 



granite quarry, great botilders are found, not only on the surface, but 

 completely buried in the pinel, which is here both grey and yellow, 

 and rudely laminated — the laminae being generally inclined or arched. 

 It often graduates into a well-rounded conglomeiatic gravel. The 

 boulders here are chiefly whinstone (local basaltic trap) and granite. 

 The nearer one gets to the quarry, the more one sees that the dispersion 

 of the boulders and the accumulation of the pinel were contempo- 

 raneoixs.^ On the slopes of Wasdale Hill, the pinel with granite 

 boulders runs up to the bases of the rocky ledges, and fills up hollows. 

 It differs but little from what one might regard as a beach deposit on 

 a steep shore, where the stones would roll down or be washed down, 

 and become imbedded in clay beneath the level of the assorting 

 action of waves. At the same time, ground-ice and coast-ice must 

 have had a share in giving rise to the peculiar character of this 

 remarkable deposit.^ 



The south side of Wasdale Hill, down to a level of about 1,100 

 feet above the sea, is craggy, and the rock& are more or less mouton- 

 ned. On the sloping face of the hard and compact rocky escarp- 

 ment there are very few loose boulders., and still fewer on the 

 summit. On the eastern side of the hill numbers may here and 

 there be seen, but, excepting towards the base of the hill, surface- 

 boulders are nowhere very plentiful. In cutting the tramway, 

 however, thousands of them were dug aut of the pinel. 



At the quarry, near the western end of the Crag, blocks as large 

 as 40 X 30 X 15 feet are sometimes obtained by blasting. The 

 granite is exceedingly hard, and little liable to be acted on by the 

 weather. Here the pinel not only rises up to the base of the Crag, 

 but runs up the sloping rock-surfaee until it terminates against the 

 minor cliffs. In some places it adheres sO' tenaciously to the mou- 

 tonned rock, that it is removed with great difficulty. The finer 

 part of the deposit would appear to have come from the S.S.W. 



Glaciated Granite. — I was fortunate in discovering a good-sized 

 surface of granite which had been lately cleared of pinel, and it 

 was nearly as exquisitely polished as at the Shap Summit Works. 

 On throwing a bucketful of water on the surface, the grooves could 

 be distinctly seen running nearly in the direction of E.N.B., or 

 obliquely up the face of the sloping Crag. To the west of the 

 quarry I afterwards found the glaciation running N.N.E. As the 

 granite was not much planed down, but polished somewhat con- 

 formably to the undulating divisional planes, ice borne by a current 

 from the direction of Wasdale Head may have glaciated the rock 



there are some Shap granite boulders in the brown clay west of Eipon. Is it 

 certain that they all came over Stainmore Pass ? 



' The number of large granite boulders on the surface of or rather slightly im- 

 bedded in the pinel and overlying loam, may have resulted from the continual 

 dropping down of boulders from the floating ice, as the land became more and more 

 deeply submerged, and after the accumulation of the pinel had, in a great measure, 

 ceased. 



2 Apart from the evidence the pinel presents of the action of ice, it somewhat 

 resembles the brecciated part of the raised beach of Weston-super-Mare, which would 

 appear to have been accumulated on a steep slope, as the land was sinking, and it is 

 not very dissimilar to portions of the Old Eed Conglomerate at the foot of XJllswater. 



