1873.] MACKINTOSH — REMARKABLE BOULDERS. 353 



remarkable, on account of their nearness to their parent rocks ; but 

 on the plain of Cumberland, and the bordering Carboniferous hills, 

 the boulders are both numerous and interesting. The Bole or Bothel 

 boulder, a short distance from the village of Bothel (near Aspatria) 

 is tbe most striking I have yet seen. It is a kind of felspathic breccia 

 and conglomerate, which, I think, may have been formed by contem- 

 poraneous volcanic and aqueous agency, or by aqueous agency and 

 afterwards metamorphosed. Professor Harkness has described a rock 

 forming part of Binsey Crag, a few miles off, from which the Bothel 

 boulder may have come, though it may have travelled from a greater 

 distance, but not from so great a distance as the neighbouring villagers 

 believe ; for some one has put it into their heads that there is no rock 

 like it nearer than Switzerland ! 



I have elsewhere written on the dispersion of boulders of Criffell 

 granite over the greater part of the plain of Cumberland *'. The larger 

 boulders may be best seen on the sea-coast, where the waves have 

 denuded the drift-deposits down to the base of tbe Lower Boulder- 

 clay. The boulders there, though sometimes thinly scattered, are 

 often in great groups called " scars." These groups may be traced 

 along the eastern coast of the Irish Sea from Maryport to Park- 

 gate. The largest boulders I have seen in Cumberland occur on the 

 coast near Flimby. Two of them are of Criffell granite, one mea- 

 suring 9x7x3 feet, the other 8x8x3. Two are of a linear or 

 semigneissose granite (from the Creetown neighbourhood ?) ; one mea- 

 sures 9x6x3 feet, the other 8x6x3. 



About St. Bees there are many large syenite boulders from Enner- 

 dale ; and near the summit of Dent hill (Skiddaw slate) there is a 

 locally celebrated boulder approaching syenite in its composition, at 

 a height of 1100 feet above the sea-level. It is 8 x 5 x 4 feet, and 

 is called Samson's Cobble, Trysting Stone, or Finger Stone (from the 

 supposed marks upon it of the Devil's fingers). Its transportation, 

 as in the case of many boulders elsewhere, is popularly attributed to 

 Satanic agency. Between Seascale and the neighbourhood of Drigg 

 there are many large boulders on the coast. One of them, of enor- 

 mous size, which, however, I missed seeing, has a tradition connected 

 with it to the effect that the Devil once tried to throw it from the 

 Cumberland mountains to the Isle of Man, and that it fell down far 

 short of its destination. 



Mr. Eccleston, of Carlisle, some time ago discovered a number of 

 Eskdale-granitc boulders on the west side of Blackcombe (Skiddaw 

 slate) at a height of at least 1000 feet above the sea. I afterwards 

 examined two groups of these boulders, the principal group being on 

 a plateau on the south side of the upper part of Fossbeck. One 

 boulder measured 8x7x3 feet, another 6x4x3 feet, and a third 

 10x8x4. They are particularly worthy of notice on account of 

 their great size coupled with their altitude above the sea. 



Lancashire. — The most important facts connected with boulders in 

 Furness are, first, the limitation of very large boulders to the base o£ the 

 pinnel or Lower Boulder-clay, as in the fine sea-coast section near 

 * Geological Mag. vol. vii., Dec. 1870. 



