15 
GLACIAL PHENOMENA NEAR YORK. BY C. FOX-STRANGWAYS, F.G.S. 
Head mh April, 1895. 
Although many accounts of the glaciation of different parts of 
this county have appeared from time to time, very little has been 
written of its great central valley. Allusions to the district have 
frequently been made in treating of larger areas ; but until quite 
recently, as far as I am aware, no one has attempted to describe or 
explain in a comprehensive manner the peculiar nature of the glacial 
beds of the neighbourhood. This is the more to be wondered at, as 
the features assumed by the drift around York are some of the most 
striking and remarkable of any part of England. 
In the Explanations of the Geological Survey, published between 
1873 and 1886''', a general description is given of the boulder clays, 
sands, and gravels that occur throughout the Vale of York ; but, this 
not being the place to enter into controversial subjects, merely a 
description of the beds is given sufficient to explain the maps without 
any theory being propounded to amount for the manner of their 
distribution. 
In 1881 Mr. Clark communicated a paper to this Society in 
which he gave a very detailed account of the glacial sections that 
were exposed in and around the City of York, and attributed the 
deposition of the beds chiefly to the agency of floating ice.f 
It was not, however, till last year that a fairly comprehensive 
study of the glaciation of the district appeared, firstly in the notes of 
the late Prof. Carvill Lewis, published posthumously ;J and secondly, 
in an important paper given to this Society by Mr. Kendall. || In the 
first of these Prof. Lewis, although his notes were hastily made 
during a rapid traverse of the country, appears to have at once 
gTasped the main features of the district, and accounts for their 
* Memoirs of the Geological Survey. Explanation of our published Maps, 
93 N.W. ; 93 N.E. ; 93 S.E. ; 96 N.W. and S.W. ; and 104 S.W., S.E. 
t Glacial Sections at York, and their relation to later Deposits, by 
J. Edmund Clark. Proc. Yorksh. Geol. Soc, vol. vii., pp. 421-439, 1881. 
X Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, 
by the late Henry Carvill Lewis. Edited by Henry W. Crosskey, 1894. 
li The Glaciation of Yorkshire, by Percy F. Kendall. Proc. Yorksh. Geol. 
Soc, vol. xii., pp. 306-318, 1894. 
