Cvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I906, 



The Oxendale line is continued down Great Langdale as far as 

 the stream which descends from Stickle Tarn, where the valley bends 

 and now runs along a line continuous with that of the shatter-belt 

 seen in the Dungeon-Gill stream. When the stream leaves this 

 line lower down at Chapel Stile, it passes from a wide straight 

 valley to a narrow sinuous one, to join the belt once more in the 

 wide portion of the valley at Elterwater. 



In Borrowdale the upper part of the wide and straight Langstrath 

 valley is continuous with a belt running down Allen-Crags Gill 

 at its head; while the other great tributary of Borrowdale near 

 Seathwaite runs in a straight valley, continuous at its head with a 

 shatter-belt occupied by the headwaters of Grainsgill. To these 

 belts we must return later ; at present, we may simply note the 

 wide straight features of valleys which can be seen to be continuous 

 with tracts occupied by shatter-belts. 



The next cases to be noticed show how parts of one river may 

 be captured by another stream working along a shatter-belt, when 

 the arrangement of the stream favours this. 



The first example to which I wish to call attention is the head 

 of Miterdale, between Wastdale and Eskdale. In a paper which 

 was published in the Journal of this Society in 1895 on ' The 

 Tarns of Lakeland,' * I maintained that the Mite once rose on 

 Scawfell, and that owing to glacial diversion its upper waters had 

 been switched off into the Esk, with the formation of Burnmoor 

 Tarn. I have been over the ground recently with Prof. Garwood, 

 and we were convinced that I was wrong. If Burnmoor Tarn is a 

 blocked lake, the barrier lies on its eastern bank and not at the 

 south-western end. So far from the upper waters of the Mite 

 having been captured by the Esk, all the evidence is in favour of 

 the possibility of future capture of the upper waters of the Esk by 

 the Mite. The upper part of Miterdale is in a shatter-belt, along 

 which it has cut a gorge terminated upstream by a remarkable 

 combe backed by a cliff, down which several gullies course, the 

 principal stream flowing over the cliff on its western side. This is 

 only about one- third of a mile from Burnmoor Tarn in the Esk 

 drainage, and the col between Esk and Mite is only some 50 feet 

 above the waters of the Esk on the other side of the col. Had 

 the stream which enters the combe from the west been situated 

 nearer Burnmoor, the Esk stream might well have been captured 



1 Vol. Li, pp. 42-43. 



