69 
EVIDENCE OF GLACIAL ACTION NEAR LEEDS. 
BY JAMES E. BEDFORD, F.G.S. 
The object of this paper on the above subject is to direct 
the attention of geologists and others to some good sections recently 
exposed to view in the Meanwood valley. For many years a 
quarry has been worked by Mr. B. Rowley in the ganister beds of 
the lower carboniferous shales and grits at Headingley, in the valley 
below Meanwood. This quarry is in rather an uncommon position for 
such excavations, in so much as it lies in the valley bottom and not 
on the hill side as is usual in quarrying in this district. The stone 
only becomes visible when the superincumbent material is removed by 
excavating. The rock appears to the eye to be fairly horizontal, 
but there is a dip to the S.E. which causes the rock to come to the sur- 
face within three or four hundred yards from the quarry. A thin bed 
of coal is seen to underlie the upper bed of ganister. Resting im- 
mediately on the rock is a bed of shale 8 feet thick, black and friable 
in its lower portions, but becoming yellow and softer in its upper 
beds. This shale is overlaid by a true glacial moraine composed of 
sandy clay with patches of sand, irregular in shape, and which occur 
in " pockets " in the clay. The sand in these patches is not bedded 
horizontally, but often inclined at a considerable angle. The moraine 
material contains great quantities of sub-angular blocks of grit rock 
of all sizes, from 2 feet 6 inches in diameter downwards. These grits 
are quite local, and consist almost entirely of ganister from the 
beds which the material now overlies. The glacial debris is evidently 
the work of a tongue of ice which stretched across the valley 
N.E. from the direction of Moortown. The bed of ganister comes to 
the surface and forms a low escarpment in that direction. It is quite 
evident that the ice crossed this escarpment and broke away masses 
of rock at this point, and carried them before it and under it to their 
present position. The escarpment is not more than three or four 
hundred yards from the quarry. The appearance of the blocks in 
the moraine leads me to believe this to have been the source of the 
