Vol. 58. ] GLACIER-LAKES IN THE CLEVELAND HILLS. 503 
January 1900, boring the peat with a set of rods. I found that 
at the apparent sill or intake at Fen-Bog Houses, there was a 
depth of 163 feet of peat below the level of the water in a drain, 
the water-level being about 4 to 6 feet below the bog-level. Another 
boring touched rock below 13 feet of peat ; and a third reached gritty 
elay at between 13 and 14 feet. The actual altitude of the rock- 
floor in these cases was almost exactly 525 feet above sea-level. 
If the peat were removed, the channel through the watershed would 
appear as a clean cut, 75 feet deep. I was informed by a signalman 
on the railway that the peat was much deeper to the southward, and 
that piles were driven into it to a depth of 60 feet in the construction 
of the railway. This part of the valley, known as Fen Bogs, is a 
true lake-overflow, as pronounced as any of the 300 or more which 
I have seen. 
On the northern side of the watershed the valley inosculates with 
that of Eller Beck, the normal valley of a stream which takes a 
rather aberrant course. It flows in from the eastward, receiving 
tributaries of about equal volume from the north and south; when 
it reaches the head of Newton Dale, a little over the actual sill of 
the intake, it turns northward and flows through a V-shaped 
valley to join the Murk Esk (see fig. 4, p.504 and Pls. XX & X XT). 
Mr. Fox-Strangways, in the works quoted, suggests that Hller 
Beck originally flowed through Fen Bogs, and that it was captured 
by the headwaters of an active tributary of the Murk Esk, in the 
fashion since made familiar to English readers by Prof. W. M. Davis. 
Mr. Fox-Strangways regarded the great trough at Fen Bogs as a 
reach of the Eller-Beck valley, which had lapsed into disuse by 
the diversion of the stream.} | 
A comparison of the sections of the two valleys will show that 
this explanation is inapplicable, the Fen-Bogs channel being far too 
large to have been cut by such a stream as Eiler Beck, and it 
belongs to a type wholly different from that which such a stream 
would produce. The water-level in Eller Beck, at its nearest 
approach to Fen Bogs, under conditions of heavy rainfall is only 
about 6 feet at most below the sill of the Fen Bogs-intake, but 
it flows over a bed of large boulders. It must have very narrowly 
escaped capture by Newton Dale. 
At the outset of this enquiry, I recognized that, if Newton Dale 
were the overflow of a glacier-lake and subject to torrential rushes 
of water, then a vast quantity of detritus must have been carried 
into the Vale of Pickering to form a great gravelly and bouldery 
delta. Reference to the maps of Pickering showed that such a fan 
of gravel, the only one on the north sidé of the Vale, does exist 
? Since this was written (in August 1900), Mr. F. R. Cowper Reed has 
published a full discussion of the evolution of the rivers of East Yorkshire. 
With most of his conclusions I am disposed to agree, indeed, geologists in 
Yorkshire have for some years employed like explanations; but, as to the history 
of the Fen-Bogs channel and a few other similar cases, 1 am compelled to dissent, 
as the sequel will show. 
2m 2 
