EDEN VALLEY AND YORKSHIRE-DALE DISTRICT. 



91 



the head of Nithsdale. As in other sections of a similar character, 

 the stones are mostly waterworn ; but they include a few that are 

 quite angular, and an occasional one or two that have hardly lost 

 any marks of glaciation. What is most noteworthy about the sec- 

 tion is the close resemblance between this drift and the upper parts 

 of the Upper Old Eed in Birkbeck, between Tebay and Shap Wells, 



Fig. 15. — Section in Settle and Carlisle Railway -cutting near 

 Armathwaite. 





Irregular seams of clay in stony loam. Length 3 ft. 



and its even closer resemblance to the highest beds of the Brockram 

 series, as, for instance, in Hilton Beck and along the banks of the 

 Bela. The resemblance is further increased by the prevailing red 

 colour of the drift-deposit, caused by the large proportion of frag- 

 ments of Permian rocks included in it. 



The cuttings northward, at least as far as Armathwaite, are much 

 of the same character as those just described (figs. 14 & 15). It is 

 clear from an examination of them, that the proportion of water- 

 worn materials steadily increases as we advance towards the Solway. 

 Even the clays seem to pass into a loamy deposit, throughout which 

 stones are scattered as they are in the clays ; and the general im- 

 pression left, after examining a long series of sections from the foot 

 of Stainmoor very nearly to Carlisle, is, that the thin intercalated 

 sands seen at the head of the valley swell out, the clays become 

 more and more laminated and interbedded with sand and gravel, 

 and ultimately pass into clean sands and gravels through such loamy 

 deposits as occur about Armathwaite. Here and there in the low 

 ground, beds like the till come in, and over- and underlie the sands 

 and gravels in an irregular way ;' but there is a steady decline in 

 the amount of clay as we go towards the north-west. 



Much of this sand and gravel forms mounds which exactly answer 

 the description of the Irish eskers, and, like them, show that the 

 planes of false bedding incline the same way that the slopes of the 

 eskers do. Some of the mounds are heaped up very irregularly, 

 especially in places where, owing to the form of the ground, there 

 must have been conflicting currents ; so that here and there occur a 

 few basin-shaped hollows, such as may be met with in mounds of 

 drift of the same character in the Dale district. 



