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The Museum Gazette 



subjects had not been organised, and more done in museum teaching, 

 the maintenance of a vivarium, and in the way of botanical and 

 geological excursions, &c. It was said in the hope of stirring up 

 local zeal, and it has, it is believed, to some extent attained its end. 



to the editor of "the museum gazette," haslemere. 



Dorman Memorial Museum, 



Middlesbrough. 



February 4, 1907. 



Dear Sir, — In reference to your note on the Straits of Dover 

 in the May number of your Journal, I would like to call attention to 

 another view of their origin. This view, first propounded by Belt and 

 supported by Professor Kendall, is that they are the channel cut by 

 the discharge into the sea of a vast system of glacier lakes in Britain 

 and on the Continent during the Ice Age. At the period of the 

 maximum extension of the ice in Britain, the drainage of the rivers 

 was dammed up by the glaciers, and lakes formed, which overflowed 

 across the surrounding valleys' sides, cutting deep and very charac- 

 teristic channels. Of these the Straits constitute one. Moreover, 

 Mr. Kendall has been able to trace a succession of overflows from 

 North Yorkshire to the Straits of Dover ; thus commencing here, we 

 find that Eskdale was dammed up and overflowed by Newton Dale 

 into another great Lake held up in the Pickering Valley. This in its 

 turn escaped by the present course of the River Derwent at Malton, 

 which is in reality the old overflow of Lake Pickering. This latter 

 lake fell into Lake H umber, a great extra-morainic sheet of water in 

 the central plain of England, produced by an obstruction of the 

 Humber and the rivers flowing into the Wash. Lake Humber 

 drained across Norfolk by the valley in which the Little Ouse and 

 Waveney arise, thence the flow continued to the Straits of Dover, 

 which represent the combined erosion of the drainage of this extra- 

 ordinary system of lakes. 



I am glad of this opportunity to call attention to the great services 

 done to glacial geology by Professor Kendall, of the Leeds Univer- 

 sity, and for further information refer readers to vol. lviii. of the 

 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for 1902, where a full 

 discussion is given in his famous and classic paper on "A System of 

 Glacier Lakes in the Cleveland Hills." 



Yours faithfully, 



Frank Elgee, Assistant Curator. 



