GEOLOGY 
and, eventually, after ponding it back in Edenside, actually repelled it 
with such force that it was obliged to flow in a direction diametrically 
Opposite to that which it had maintained for so long during the earlier 
part of the Glacial Period. Hence much of the ice of the upper parts 
of Edenside streamed over the Shap Fells southward by way of Kendal 
and Lancaster ; while the chief overflow, ponded back at the head of the 
valley, found its way in the direction of the North Sea by way of Stain- 
moor and the lower half of the valley of the Tees. Judging by the 
effects produced upon the rock surface, this overwhelming of Cumber- 
land by ice of extraneous origin did not continue very long. The load- 
ing of this part of the earth’s crust by a mass of ice, which must have 
considerably exceeded 2,000 feet in thickness (and farther north may 
well have exceeded 4,000 feet) is believed by many to have eventually 
wrought its own end. It is supposed that the weight of the vast load 
of ice which had accumulated on the seaward margin of north-western 
Europe, may have helped to bring about a slow depression of the earth’s 
crust. The mountain-tops were gradually lowered by the depression ; 
rain fell and flowed off the land where previously the precipitation mainly 
took the form of snow ; and, finally, the depression brought the sea more 
and more inland. With the landward advance of the sea, those warmer 
currents of both water and air, which constitute the so-called Gulf Stream, 
extended their influence two hundred miles to the east of the former 
limit. Hence, the supply of snow having ceased, the glaciers were cut 
at their source; whereupon the great confluent mass of ice, with all its 
tributaries and feeders, each charged throughout with mud, sand, stones 
and rock masses of various sizes, quietly melted away as it stood, and 
without passing in reverse order through any of the successive stages by 
which it reached its maximum. 
(4) The glaciated and other materials within the ice (there was 
probably little or none of the so-called ‘ moraine profonde’ beneath) were 
liberated, as the ice melted, in the form of a kind of sediment. The 
boulder clay, and the beds of sand, gravel, peat, etc., associated with it, 
and also the eskers, were formed on the spot, as the varied results of this 
one operation of the melting of stony ice. (It may be mentioned here 
that this explanation of the englacial origin of glacial deposits was first 
put forward by the writer of this section in the year 1874, and is pub- 
lished in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xxxi., and in 
the Geological Magazine for November of that year.) : 
The importance of these glacial deposits in connection with Cum- 
berland can hardly be overrated, as they form the subsoil of nearly the 
whole of the cultivated ground, as well as much of the land under pasture. 
(i) The relation of the present flora of Cumberland (and, to a 
certain extent, that of the fauna also) to its parent sources, is largely of 
a geological nature, and is intimately connected with the changes of 
climate that arose during the Post-Pliocene Period. As already men- 
tioned, Cumberland was formerly connected with Ireland on the west, 
while on the east a land connection with western Europe also existed 
57 
