204 Mr. W. Brockbank on 



Shap. Wastdale Pike is not an isolated peak, and would 

 not be recognised as granitic from its contour. It is an 

 outlier of the mountain range at the head of Troutbeck and 

 Haweswater, of which Tarn Crag forms the central summit. 



The Shap granite is of a very marked character, having a 

 rich red colour with very large crystals of feldspar. A 

 railway has been recently made up to the quarries, and an 

 extensive plant put down for polishing the granite. It is 

 to be used in our new Town Hall, and cannot fail to come 

 into popular use on account of its great beauty. It can be 

 obtained in very large masses. 



The moraines described by Dr. Buckland at Shap are 

 not of a marked character, as the writer failed to find any- 

 thing to be considered a true moraine. The valley below 

 the granite, and thence over the whole of Shap Fells, has a 

 most remarkable appearance from the large numbers of 

 of immense rounded masses of granite which are everywhere 

 scattered, all the way to Tebay, where Wastdale Beck joins 

 the Lune. These widely dispersed boulders cannot, the 

 writer thinks, be accounted for by the agency of glaciers ; 

 besides which the summit of Wastdale Pike is but 1,853 

 feet above the level of the sea, and the valley below it some 

 500 feet lower, whilst the junction with the Lune at Tebay 

 is 700 feet above the sea, so that it is almost an impossi- 

 bility for any glacier to have transported its moraines to 

 any point from which they could be carried and dispersed 

 by drift ice. 



Another explanation must be sought, and it will proba- 

 bly be found in the very fact of the occurrence of this solitary 

 granite peak where it is now found. The whole district of 

 Shap abounds in extensive veins of Whinstone and other 

 plutonic rocks, crowned by the huge granitic mass of 

 Wastdale Pike, which has evidently been forced upwards 

 by some volcanic movement through the slates. The 

 changes which would result from this immense movement, 



