450 THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



acterized by blocks of Shap granite, may be followed northward 

 along the coast past Scarborough and Whitby ; then west along 

 the Cleveland Hills ; then south again through Oulston to the 

 city of York ; then west to near Allerton, where the Stainmoor 

 Glacier is joined by the Wensleydale Glacier, a fine medial 

 moraine marking the line of junction. The Wensleydale Gla- 

 cier is characterized by bowlders of carboniferous limestone 

 and sandstone, and its lateral moraine is followed northward 

 through Wormald Green, Markington, Fountains Abbey, and 

 along the Permian outcrop to Masham, where it turns west to 

 Wensleydale, passing Jervaulx Abbey, and running up the val- 

 ley. North of Wensleydale the moraine of the Stainmoor Gla- 

 cier is followed through Richmond to Kirby Ravensworth, and 

 westward to the mountains, where the glacier attained an eleva- 

 tion of two thousand feet. Thus the Stainmoor Glacier, a tongue 

 of the great Irish Sea Glacier, had been divided into two branches 

 by the Cleveland Hills, one branch going south to the city of 

 York, which is built on its terminal moraine, the other branch 

 flowing out of the Tees, and being deflected southward along the 

 coast by the North Sea Glacier, with which it became confluent. 

 The Irish Sea Glacier, the most important glacier of Eng- 

 land, came down from Scotland, and being re-enforced by local 

 ice-streams, and flowing southward until it abutted against the 

 mountains of Wales, it was divided into two tongues, one of 

 which flowed to Wellington and Shrewsbury, while the other 

 went southwest across Anglesey into the Irish Sea. This great 

 glacier and its branches are all outlined by terminal moraines. 

 A small tongue from it, the Aire Glacier, was forced eastward 

 at Skipton and has its own distinctive moraine. In the neigh- 

 borhood of Manchester the great moraine of this Irish Sea Gla- 

 cier may be followed through Bacup, Hey, Stalybridge, Stock- 

 port, and Macclesfield, being as finely developed as the moraines 

 of Switzerland and America. South of Manchester, it contains 

 flint and shell fragments, brought by the glacier from the sea- 

 bottom over which it passed. At Manchester the ice was at least 

 fourteen hundred feetthick, beingas thick asthe Rhone Glacier.* 



* Abstract by the author of a paper read at the Birmingham meeting of the 

 British Association, September, 1886. 



