86 
year a great deposit of glacial till and other glacial deposits 
lias been uncovered : some it has been necessary to remove, 
and some still remains. As we deepened the section we 
first came upon a line of boulders resting on the edges of the 
lower cave-earth, and dipping outwards at an angle of about 40 
degrees. Deeper to the dip the deposit was found to be a true 
till of great tenacity, containing well scratched boulders, and 
in places intercalated with beds of sand and laminated clay. 
The boulders were of all sizes, from blocks weighing some 
tons to mere sand grains. "Whence had they come ? Some 
were semi-angular blocks of Carboniferous Limestone, but of 
these many were of a darker rock than that in which the 
cave is formed. But a very large proportion, nearly half, 
were of Silurian grit (" blue rock,'' as Yorkshire has it). 
Others were a conglomerate from the base of the Carboniferous 
Limestone, containing slate pebbles, telling of the time when 
all Yorkshire's mineral wealth was still in the lap of futurity. 
These must have travelled in the ice two miles or more. Car- 
boniferous gritstones were there, for whose origin we must 
look up to the tops of Ingleborough or Pennigent. 
The accumulation of these waifs and strays, lying as they 
do on a col 1,450 feet above the sea, at a place where there 
are no gathering grounds for a mere local glacier, must be 
attributed to the transport of ice when the Kibble valley 
alongside, and 900 feet below us, was filled with ice up to 
this point, and still higher. The ice scratches on the rocks at 
the base of King Scar hard by show us the direction in which it 
travelled across the col from Stainforth towards Long Preston 
by way of Attermire ; and there are not wanting evi- 
dences in the district to show that this great confluent ice- 
sheet covered all the country visible from the cave mouth, 
and many miles beyond.* 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxviii., p. 471, 1872. 
