222 Geology of Eglingham District. By James Taib. 



As a matter of course I speak of the Q-lacial Age as an 

 accepted fact ; just as it is accepted that there was a Silurian, 

 a Devonian, or a Carboniferous Age: and it occurred in this 

 part of the Northern Hemisphere in the latest of the great 

 Creative periods of the earth — the Saturday, if it may be so 

 termed — of the Creation Week. 



Long before it began, it is thought that the Valley of the 

 Breamish did not exist, but that the strata which terminate so 

 abruptly with the encircling hills were continued across to, and 

 lay on the flanks of the volcanic Cheviots, if they did not overtop 

 them. But the sure, though slow forces of Nature, operating 

 through boundless time, so acted in denuding and breaking up 

 the structure, and bearing it to lower levels, that on the advent 

 of the Glacial Age, it found the valley systems in a certain 

 degree as we now find them ; but it has certainly made them 

 broader and deeper, and rounded off many surfaces in an 

 unmistakeable manner. 



This finely Glaciated Rock, as you have seen, is striated in a 

 due W. and E. direction ; and on the other side of the valley on 

 the Ticket Hill, the markings are the same : but when we come 

 to examine the striations on the rocks of the coast, and for a 

 certain distance inland, they are found due N. and S. All along 

 the lino of the Great Whin Sill in the Belford district, and over 

 the Spindleston and Budle Crags, they are found in abundance, 

 and nowhere finer than in the Limestone quarries at Little Mill. 

 But I have also succeeded in finding them where they trend 

 from N.W. to S.E. : — the finest example of this striation is in 

 the valley west of Bellshill. Now this is just what we expect to 

 find to be in keeping with the theory of the great Ice flow. Its 

 great centre of gathering was on the Scandinavian continent, 

 whence it flowed Southward, covering up what is now the 

 German Ocean, and sweeping over part of our coast lines. But 

 at the same time all the Scottish and English mountains of a 

 certain altitude formed centres of dispersion whence the glaciers 

 radiated — on the W. to the Atlantic, on the E. to where they 

 joined the overmastering Scandinavian current, and turned 

 Southward as far as the N. bank of the Thames. 



And now, looking at the Cheviots as a centre of dispersion, it 

 will be seen that the Ice, although overtopping the hills, would 

 force with greatest pressure through the valleys — those of the 

 Aln, the Eglingham, and that between Rass Castle and the 



