426 PEOCEEDINGS OF l^HE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. [Jime 23, 



thickness varies from 40 to 60 feet. An intelligent Scotchman, who 

 had been concerned in well-sinking, informed me that at a depth of 60 

 feet Tinder this clay the drift was found to consist of a layer of sand 

 with water, a layer of fine bluish clay, a layer of fine gravel, and a 

 layer of sand (middle sand and gravel ?). The distinction between 

 this Boulder- clay and pin el was sufficiently manifest. Unlike pin el, 

 which is packed full of stones of all sizes up to a certain diameter, the 

 stones were sparingly distributed through the clay under notice, and, 

 with the exception of the large boulders, a number of the stones 

 taken out of it at random, and gathered into a heap, exhibited a 

 wonderful approximation to uniformity of size. In one heap the 

 average diameter was from 5 to 6 inches. This looked as if the 

 stones, ^previously assorted, had been brought from a sea-beach by 

 fioating ice, and here dropped into the clay as it was accumulating. 

 I was able to trace this clay for a considerable distance N.E. on the 

 Dalton road. What appears to be a continuation of it may be seen 

 between Dalton railway-stalioii and the tunnel, overlying a pebbly 

 gravel.* 



Ic. Surface Boulders. — There is a very large boulder of porphyry 

 lying on the surface in a square not far from Barrow railway-sta- 

 tion ; but it was on Stainton Green, near the centre of the Purness 

 penininsula, that I met with the most extraordinary array of 

 enormous boulders in close proximity I have anywhere seen remote 

 from a hill-side from which they could have fallen, and in a situa- 

 tion where no valley-glacier could have left them. The largest was 

 about 18 X 12 X 4 ; but Mr. Bolton (a meritorious local geologist) in- 

 formed me that three or four stones, at least twice as large, had been 

 blasted and used for building. The lower part of the boulders was 

 imbedded in ochreous drift. They were more or less rounded and 

 smoothly sculptured, the sculpturing, as before stated, running down 

 under the stones. In some places they were polished. Here and 

 there smooth basins and furrows had evidently been ground out. 

 One curvilinear channel, not only smooth but almost polished, was 

 two feet deep. On one side of it, and opening downwards, a smooth 

 circular small hole presented a fac-simile of a part of a Pholas- 

 burrow. The possible derivation of these boulders could easily be 

 traced; for a limestone cliff consisting of rounded, basined, and 

 channelled blocks might be seen three or four hundred yards off, 

 from which they were probably floated by ice. 



7. Sections obtained by borings near Ireleth. — As a means of ascer- 

 taining the succession of deposits, bore -holes are seldom to be relied 

 on ; but, in connexion with the question of the triplex division of 

 the drifts in Furness, it may be important to give a section of one 



^ I had little time to notice the Postglacial deposits of the Furness peninsula. 

 They consist principally of a bluish or greyish warp or clay, which partly fills 

 up the low-level valleys, and runs round knolls of glacial drift — and of a forma- 

 tion, more or less consolidated, of sand and shells, which I have reason to 

 believe cannot be referred to aiiy particular period, though it is certainly newer 

 than the Upper Boulder- clay, and in many places older than the recent beach- 

 sand and shingle. I have only seen it on the beach, at the mouth of a brook, 

 near Seawood. 



