EDEJST VALLEY AND YORKSHIRE- DALE DISTRICT. 77 



occur, there the sea must have been in glacial times. It will be 

 shown further on that this kind of evidence is, in many cases, at 

 least equivocal, and that several other causes must have been at 

 work producing the appearances in question. Some of the laminated 

 clays contain angular and glaciated stones ; and in a few instances, 

 where the lamination is not very evident, it is not easy to distinguish 

 them from ordinary till. 



In the dales the mounds of sand and gravel are found at intervals 

 from near the highest place where sand begins to appear in the 

 drift downwards towards the mouth of the dale ; but they seem to 

 attain their greatest development about the mouths of the larger 

 tributary valleys. In proceeding towards the lower parts of the 

 dales the gravel on the whole does not appear to become much more 

 waterworn. This is probably due to the share the larger tributaries 

 have had in contributing towards the contents of the gravel-mounds, 

 so that it is not an unusual circumstance to find mounds of slightly 

 washed gravel a long way below another part of the dale where the 

 striae are nearly obliterated from most of the stones. 



In one of the Settle and Carlisle Eail way- cuttings near Horton-in- 

 Ribblesdale the line has passed through a deposit of tough clay, full 

 of glaciated boulders, and quite of the character of ordinary till. In 

 one part a flask-shaped deposit of finely laminated and false-bedded 

 sand and thin seams of clean gravel occurs surrounded, certainly on 

 three sides, by the above-mentioned clay-drift (fig. 1). There is 



Fig. 1. — Section in the Settle and Carlisle Railway -cuttings near 

 Horton-in-Ribblesdale. 





Undisturbed nest of finely stratified sand and gravel in till. r. Eock. 

 Length 30 ft. 



not the slightest sign of any contortion ; and the deposit is clearly 

 not due to river-action, because the sides of the nest close in rapidly 

 above, and the railway -cutting shows plainly enough that the sand 

 does not extend even as far as the western bank. 



If this stiff clay full of glaciated stones is part of a moraine pro- 

 foncle, how is this undisturbed nest of sand, which extends upwards 

 for at least 10 feet, to be accounted for ? The ice that this drift is 

 supposed to have accumulated under cannot have been less than 

 several hundred, perhaps it was more than a thousand feet in thick- 

 ness over that particular spot ; it is therefore obvious that the for- 

 ward movement of such a mass a single inch must have resulted in 



