134 Sheppani : The Making of East Vorks/iire. 



mountainous districts of Scandinavia, Scotland, the Eng-lish 

 Lake District and Wales. These g-laciers increased in size until 

 eventually several of them coalesced and flowed into the seas. 

 In Great Britain there is evidence that g"laciers from the hig-h 

 lands reached the North Sea by means of the vallevs previouslv 

 existing-. From the English Lake District a huge g-lacier 20 

 miles wide filled Teesdale and entered the North Sea on the site 

 of the present Tees' mouth. An arm of this broke throug'h the 

 valley side, and descended into the Vale of York, where, near 

 York and Tadcaster, it left behind two of the most perfect 

 terminal moraines to be found in these islands. The mountains 

 of South-west Scotland, North-east Ireland, South-east Ireland, 

 and Wales poured their superabundant ice into the Irish Sea ; 

 as the great masses of ice formed, the courses of smaller 

 glaciers were diverted and changed, and we have absolute proof 

 that the Irish Sea was filled with ice forming an immense ice 

 sheet. Marks of glaciation occur on the summit of Suae Fell, at 

 a height of over 2,000 feet ; and animals such as the Irish Elk 

 probably found their way over the ice to the Isle of Man at this 

 stage in the history of our islands, where they perished and left 

 their remains in the drift beds. 



Whilst all this had been going on here, however, the centre 

 of the glaciation in Europe, viz., the Scandinavian mountains 

 (which at that time were much higher than they are to-day) was 

 slowly but surely sending forth huge ice streams to the west 

 and south and east. These ice streams carried with them 

 characteristic rocks from their place of origin, which have been 

 scattered like seeds over the North and West of Russia, the 

 North German Plain, Denmark, and Eastern England. The 

 Scandinavian ice entirely occupied the bed of the North Sea, 

 and, on reaching our shores its force was such that it diverted 

 southwards the enormous glacier coming from the Lake 

 District down Teesdale. The combined ice of Teesdale and 

 more northern streams coasted along East Yorkshire from 

 north to south ; the cliffs of Speeton, 440 feet in height, formed 

 too abrupt a buttress to be entirely surmounted by the ice, and 

 a great moraine consisting of gravel and clay, was deposited 

 along the cliff edge between Speeton and Buckton. Speeton 

 Windmill stands on the top of one of these morainic mounds. 

 On reaching the lower part of the headland, however, where the 

 chalk is only some 200 feet in height, the ice was able to 

 over-ride the land, and the chalk is consequently covered with 

 the boulder clay and deposits left by the melting ice. 



Naturalist, 



