428 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [JuilG 23, 



may formerly have extended quite across the ravine, and the missing 

 part may have been ploughed out by a glacier, or vrashed away by 

 the brook, or most probably removed by both. After a steep climb, 

 the floor of the dark and deep corry is reached. At its head there 

 are undoubted traces of local glacial action, though it is difficult to 

 say how far the moraine matter may not have been arranged under the 

 waters of the sea. In the middle, what looks like a small conical 

 hill from below rises up and forms the barrier of a swampy plateau 

 covered with rushes, which may be the' site of a former small lake. 

 Between the conical mound and a moraine-Hke accumulation on the 

 N.W. side, there is a breach, which may mark the outlet of the sup- 

 posed small lake. On the S.E. side a great mass of fine debris runs 

 up the steep slope. On the N.W. side of the basin-shaped head of the 

 corry, the base of the steep cliffs of Skiddaw slate is concealed under 

 a series of chip and splinter deltas which point upwards to the ver- 

 tical gutters or " rakes " down which the detritus must have fallen 

 or been carried by rain. I mention this to show the difficulty of 

 distinguishing glacial moraine matter from common *' screes " in 

 narrow mountain-recesses *. 



On ascending the south side of the corry, and after walking over 

 the brow of the hill, I descended towards Whicham through Black- 

 Crag ravine, and was not- surprised to find the mouth of this ravine 

 choked up with drift containing large angular and rounded boulders. 

 Along the base of the south-east escarpment of Blackcombe, and 

 filling up the greater part of the length and breadth of Whicham 

 Valley, there is an undulating broad terrace of drift, which near the 

 hill-side rises up gradually and regularly, like an old tidal zone, 

 and stretches into the ravines and cwms of the mountain. So far as 

 can be seen, the lower part of this drift consists, at least in many 

 places, of pinel. Thick deposits of sand and gravel apparently con- 

 stitute its mass. In some places these deposits are capped with a 

 reddish clay. The small brook which runs down from the semi- 

 circular cwm behind Whicham parsonage has made a well-defined 

 rut in the longitudinally level terrace, and exposed a section of alter- 

 nating layers of loam, clay, sand, and rounded shingle, in some places 

 resting on pinel. At a lower level, near Whicham Hall, a pit-section 

 in a gently swelling knoll reveals thick masses of sand and gravel, 

 the latter containing pebbles of granite, quartz (from the S.E. slope 

 of Blackcombe ?), &c., many of them extra-rounded ; granite seems 

 to predominate. 



At the S.W. end of Whicham valley there are several sand and gravel 

 hillocks ; and Mr. Salmon, F.Gr.S., informs me that in this neigh- 

 bourhood, some time ago, a bore-hole was stopped in about 300 feet 

 of sand. Between the Whicham drift-terrace and Millom Hill, there 

 is a fiat depression, like a tidal channel, covered with recent deposits. 

 Its bottom is only slightly elevated above the present sea-level. On 

 the N.W. side of the low eminence called Holborn Hill (on which 



* For remarks on the distinction between moraines and screes in the valleys 

 f the Coniston Fells, see the author's ' Scenery of England and Wales,' Excur- 

 sion XX. 



