ON THE GLACIAL DRIFT OF FURNESS, LANCASHIRE. 211 



description of these. Indeed, so truly do the glacial footsteps tell 

 the same tale everywhere, varying only in degree of magnificence, 

 that it would seem there can be only one set of terms happily and 

 faithfully co record it in. Furness is not without " that union of 

 prominent yet rounded crag and gently curving hollow which indi- 

 cates the passage of the ice-sheet, with hardly less clearnes* than the 

 ripple on the shore tells of the retreat of the sea,"* and lit up by the 

 slanting rays of the evening sun, assuredly it yields nothing in point 

 of interest and loveliness to the prouder types of Scotland. Besides 

 being of frequent occurrence on our moors, this feature is especially 

 conspicuous on the hills at Newland, and from thence, obscured a 

 little by plantations to the he^d of the bay, where it ao;ain becomes 

 traceable up the valley of the Crake. It first arrested my attention 

 and had its true cause assigned to it in my note-book, after visiting 

 in the autumn of last year the Koches Moutonnees in the vale of the 

 Hotha at Ambleside, described by Mr. Hull.f and cited by Sir C. 

 Lyell in his ' Antiquity of Man.'J " When a geologist,'* says Mr. 

 Greikie, " has once familiarized himself with its varieties even in one 

 locality, there are not many landscapes in the country where he will 

 fail to detect its presence." 



Roches Moutonnees. — True E-oches Moutonnees lie on the eastern 

 outskirts of Ulverstone. There is one close to the railway viaduct 

 over the canal ; it has been quarried, but still retains much of its 

 remarkably rounded form. Another in the peat-mosses on the N.E. 

 of the canal, is buried under the railway embankment ; the domed 

 top long refused to afford good foundation. 



Stream Valleys. — In a deep narrow gill of the Silurian strata, close 

 to Ulverstone, the striation seems to denote that the glacier in its 

 progress has taken the curve of the gill, as it swerves from W. by N. 

 and E. by S. to JN.W. by N. and S.E. by S. It is difficult to fix the 

 amount of glaciation in this gill ; rocks of Devonian age have been 

 swept out, but to what extent they may have been developed it is im- 

 possible to guess. I have always associated its glaciation m point of 

 age (whether correctly or not I cannot say), with the forming of 

 some remarkable indentations on the moor of Osmotherley, about a 

 mile distant. These miniature glens, as they might be called, are 

 deep, dry, parallel hollows, having a N.W. and S.E. direction, con- 

 verging a little as they descend the moor-side, and fall into the drain- 

 age line leading to Ulverstone. Doubtless they differ little in cha- 

 racter from many other depressions on the moors, but the singular, 

 almost mural outline, they assume on the horizon is very arresting 

 to the eye, and although they may mark the course of occasional 

 rivulets, yet it is scarcely likely they are water-formed unaided by 

 ice. As yet, however, no striae have been detected in them. The 

 crags in the vicinity are greatly crushed, a circumstance not alto- 



* Geikie, ' On the Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scotland.' 

 t Hull, Edin. New Phil. Journal, vol. xi. p. 31, 1860. 

 | Geol. Evidence of the Antiq. of Man, 



