25 
aspect, from the large numbers of immense rounded masses of 
granite which are everywhere scattered. These widely dis- 
persed boulders cannot altogether be accounted for by the 
agency of glaciers. The summit of Wasdale Pike is only 
1,853 feet above the sea, and the valley at its base some 500 
feet lower, and the junction of Wasdale Pike with the Lune 
at Tebay is but 700 feet above the sea; so that it scarcely 
appears probable that any glacier could be continuous to 
such a point as would admit of its transporting its moraines 
to the sea, where they could be carried away and dispersed 
by drift ice. 
Another explanation must be sought, and it will probably 
be found in the very fact of the occurrence of this solitary 
peak of granite. The whole district abounds in intrusive 
veins of whinstone, and other plutonic rocks, crowned by 
the granite peak of Wasdale Pike, which has evidently 
been forced up through the slates by some volcanic force, 
and this might produce the tremendous effects which scat- 
tered these blocks far and wide. 
The denudations here have been on a tremendous scale, 
and possibly carried the granite boulders far down the Lune 
valley, and formed the moraine-like mounds referred to by 
Dr. Buekland, near Milnthorpe and Lancaster, at which 
points possibly drift ice became the modifying and trans- 
porting agent. 
MICROSCOPICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SECTION. 
October 10th, 1870. 
Joseph Baxendell. F.R.A.S., President of the Section, 
in the Chair. 
Mr. Joseph Sidebotham read the following paper — 
“ On the Variations of Abraxas Grossulariata.” 
