Geology of Eylingham District By James Tait. 223 



Chatton Park and Lyham Hills being the principal outlets ; a 

 minor one being Crawley Dene and the Titlington valley. 



We see how it has made these broad terraces before us, and 

 crushed round the front of Harehope Hill, leaving the same 

 mark, while the whole top of the hill is completely rounded over. 

 Eass Castle has been well scrubbed on both cheeks, and on the 

 front of several hills a well-marked terrace is formed, notably 

 Eass Castle, Chatton Park, Weetwood, and Doddington ; over 

 there the Ticket Hill has the same ; and near Belford, at 

 Warenton Law — for it has served to split up the current between 

 the Bellshill valley and the Belford basin, and has the same 

 terrace on its North front. 



Next we come to consider what influence this great agent 

 exerted in the general distribution of our various soils, and in 

 the arrangement of the upper surfaces. On the cessation of the 

 great Arctic cold, and when the Ice-fields began to break up 

 and gradually to shrink backward to the higher lands, immense 

 floods of water would be the result ; and if we bear in mind 

 that, when at the greatest cold it is calculated that the Ice cap 

 would be at the least 2000 feet in thickness, and every 10 cubic 

 feet of Ice would yield 8 cubic feet of water, we can only 

 imagine, in a degree, how the lowlands would be covered and 

 torn up with surging floods ; for as it is computed that the river 

 Ehine was then 48 times its present volume, and the Mississippi 

 might be multiplied by 75 ; so in like pi'oportion lateral inland 

 valleys, like that of the Breamish, would be like lakes, from 

 which transverse valleys like this beneath us would act as over- 

 flows or great waterways. The great deposits of the under or 

 Boidder clay are thought to result irom the Ice flow transporting 

 materials along its path ; and the finer, upper soils, where left, 

 are the result of re-assortment by the ensuing floods, disinteg- 

 ration, quiet depositions, and organic growths. 



And it is curious how we find large patches of porphyritic 

 Breamish soil in the lowlands, and always in the shape of rolling 

 billowy mounds, but always in company with its patch of bog, 

 just as in the parent valley. A large patch of this soil is around 

 Shipley Lodge; another under Charlton, near Link Hall. As 

 we trace down the valley of the Alu, we find a series of junctions 

 and grand junctions ; and again lateral branches shooting off 

 the main artery, when it ran at higher levels, until it met the 

 coast flow, and heaped up its mounds on the farms of Hawkhill, 



