1869.] MACKINTOSH LANCASHIRE AND CUMBERLAND DRIFTS. 421 



breccia than a drift. It is perhaps the most unworkable stuff in the 

 world. The pick can make little, and the spade no impression on it ; 

 and it cannot be blasted. During my first visit to this section I 

 could see no indications of stratification, and in my notes called the 

 pinel a " terrible pell-mell accumulation ; " but on examining it im- 

 mediately after fresh faces of it had been exposed by the unusually 

 high tides of the 31st of January, 1869, the appearance of stratifica- 

 tion was very strongly marked. It was here and there curved, 

 arched, and false-bedded, though the general dip was to the south 

 at a small angle with the limestone floor underneath, a circumstance 

 which is not easily explained on the theory of accumulation under 

 either water or ice *. The lines separating the beds were as con- 

 tinuous as the number of imbedded stones would apparently allow ; 

 and in some places, where there happened to be few stones, the pinel 

 was distinctly laminated. The pinel likewise presented the appear- 

 ance of having been fractured at intervals ; but whether the rents 

 were continued into the underlying limestone I had not an opportu- 

 nity of ascertaining. One feature of the pinel I think deserves par- 

 ticular attention. On tbe beach I saw a fallen boulder with hard 

 laminae of loam adhering to one side, and I afterwards found that some 

 of the boulders in the pinel above were partly bedded in thin laminae. 

 As a mere attempt at an explanation of this phenomenon, I would 

 suggest that the stone may have been held at a certain level by a 

 mass of floating ice while the laminae were deposited beneath it, or 

 that after the first imbedding of the stone it may have been partly 

 uprooted by ice floating from N. to S. so as to leave a space beneath 

 it for the deposition of the laminae. Mr. De Ranee, of the Geologi- 

 cal Survey, on seeing my sketch, expressed his belief that the mere 

 tendency of sea-waves to insinuate themselves under stones firmly 

 imbedded in drift might excavate a cavity on one side which 

 might afterwards become filled with laminated loam, or clay. 

 All these suggestions take for granted the presence of water, 

 and are irreconcilable with the doctrine of accumulation under a 

 great crust of land-ice. Here district or valley glacial action will 

 not apply. 



e. Pinel and Contorted Sand and Gravel near Ulverstone. — The dif- 

 ficulty of referring the accumulation of the pinel of this district to land- 

 ice will still further appear when we come to observe the mode of its 

 association with middle drift in the extensive section exposed west 

 of the Ulverstone railway-station. I at first endeavoured to sepa- 

 rate the pinel from the sand and gravel above it, but after five 

 or six visits, between which fresh features were exposed, I could only 

 arrive at the conclusion that the pinel is so dove-tailed into the 

 lower part of the sand and gravel as to indicate that both formations 

 must have been accumulated under water, and that ice must in some 

 way have been instrumental in giving rise to the numerous displace- 

 ments and contortions which render it almost impossible to unravel 

 the details of this remarkable section. Instead of attempting to do 



* I very lately observed an instance of similar stratification in the Lower 

 Permian Sandstone at Pontefract. 



