24 
reason to believe that such was the condition of our country 
during the boulder drift period. 
The Duddon Valley, in its upper portion, which centres 
in Bowfell, is, in its glacial aspect, similar in every way to 
Eskdale. Below Seathwaite it would however receive a 
very important affluent from the Coniston range of moun- 
tains, which would there unite its glacier with that of the 
Duddon Valley; — and at this point we find, as might be 
expected, very fine examples of glacial action. The rocks 
are mammillated in large groups. Perched blocks, high 
up the hill sides, testify to the great thickness of the 
glacier, and are very conspicuous in the landscape. They 
frequently occur in groups, and seem to lie as if in one 
main current, forming in places fine lateral moraines. The 
estuary of the Duddon below Broughton-in-Furness opens 
out into a wide bay, and supposing, as in the Eskdale 
valley, that the sea formerly reached much further inland, 
and was subject to the action of floe or drift ice, it would 
then receive the moranic debris, as before described. The 
granite district of Harter Fell would furnish its contri- 
bution of boulders, to be mixed with the porphyries and 
greenstones of Bowfell and the slates of Coniston in the 
terminal moraines. 
Dr. Buckland held the opinion that the granite boulders 
of the Shap district had been carried southwards by glaciers, 
and deposited by their agency over the midland counties; 
but the writer was not able to find the same evidences of 
glacial action in the Shap fells as those which exist in 
West Cumberland. The granite district of Shap is limited 
to an area of some 800 to 1,000 acres; comprising Wasdale 
Pike, about 2 miles above the Shap Wells House. Wasdale 
Pike is not an isolated peak, but is an outlier of the moun- 
tain range at the head of Troutbeck, of which Tarn Crag 
forms the central summit. The valley below the pike and 
thence over the whole of Shap Fells has a most remarkable 
