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V.—The Granite-drift of Furness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

E. Hodgson
E. Hodgson
Affiliation:
Cavendish Street, Ulverston, 1st March, 1870.
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Extract

The dispersion of debris from the rocks of the Lake district towards the midland counties, is an old and well established fact. Between 1820 and 1850, we find it occupying the attention of such authors as Sedgwick, Phillips, Murchison, Agassiz. Buckland, Binney, Hopkins, and Mantell; and the present day observer may well be cautious in attempting to improve upon their initiatory labours. Special attention appears to have been directed to eastern and south-eastern lines of transport. The Shap granite was followed to every outpost; and the Cumberland erratics in the South Lancashire and Cheshire plains-and remoter valleys and uplands—received recognition in exhaustive memoirs.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 7 , Issue 73 , July 1870 , pp. 328 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1870

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References

page 327 note 1 De la Beche's Geological Manual, 1833. Extract from Professor Sedgwick's Paper in Ann. Phil., 1825.

page 327 note 2 Proc. Geol. Soc. London, 1840.

page 329 note 1 Wonders of Geology, 1848, vol i., p. 212.

page 331 note 1 A good illustration of the rate at which in point of time these broken swards or salt-marshes will form along shores, is given in the fact that between Barrow and Rampside, at a point now protected by a railway embankment, there is an old ironore shipping floor, which was used about 100 years ago. Over part of this floor soil has been laid, and many crops of potatoes grown; but in another place it underlies pebbles, sand, soil, and good herbage, to the thickness of 2 feet 3 or 4 inches. This shows in section, having been cut down again by tides; and from the base may be dug out to this day good samples of Stainton ore.

page 332 note 1 Jonathan Otley's Descriptive Guide to the English Lakes, eighth edition.

page 332 note 2 Rev. Prof. J. G. Cumming, Geology of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

page 332 note 3 Mr. Binney, MS.

page 332 note 4 See a description by Mr. Binney of the St. Bees Sandstone, Mems. of the Lit. and Phil. Soc, Manchester, vol. ii., 3rd series. “Further Observations on the Carb. Perm. and Triassic Strata of Cumberland and Dumfries.”

page 333 note 1 Mr. W. Dickinson, MS.

page 333 note 2 Rev. T. Ellwood, MS.

page 334 note 1 October 18, 1869.

page 334 note 2 Identified as such by Mr. B. M. Wright, Great Russell Street.

page 335 note 1 See my paper in the North Lonsdale Magazine, p. 235.

page 335 note 2 Otley's Guide to the Lakes, p. 145.

page 335 note 3 On the authority of Mr. J. Eccleston.

page 336 note 1 See Mr. Binney's paper in Trans. Lit. and Phil. Soc., Manch., vol. x., 1852, where he ascribes the drift-deposits near Blackpool to the conjoint action of Cumberland glaeiers and icebergs, the former “extending from the mountain-sides down into the sea.“ The grand glaciation on what is now Morecambe Bay, between Bardsey and Aldingham, which I noticed in the “Geologist,” 1864, and again more fully described in the N. L. Mag., 1866, is about 3,200 feet below our greatest altitudes.

page 336 note 2 Trans. Lit. and Phil. Soc., Manchester, Vol. xiv., 1857.

page 336 note 3 Mr. Binney, MS.

page 336 note 4 Messrs. Eccleston and Hodgson, MSS. According to the former, the fellsides and outside pastures are so thickly strewn with boulders that they give immense trouble to the agriculturists, who in general prefer burying them below plough-reach to any other mode of extirpation.

page 336 note 5 “Letters” appended to Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes.

page 336 note 6 The exact position of Syning-gill was courteously pointed out to me by Mr. J. Crozier, of Riddings, Threlkeld; as was also that of Brandy-gill, a branch of Grainsgill, near Carrock Fell. See Sketch Map, reduced from the one-inch Ordnance sheet.

page 337 note 1 Mr. Dickinson, MS.

page 338 note 1 It may be a question whether the true iceberg deposit reaches more than half that height.

page 338 note 2 At Low Haume, there is, abutting against the limestone of Housethwaite hill, a curious mass of cemented angular limestone pebbles, containing Carboniferous limestone fossils This was first seen by me many years ago. Mr. Talbot Aveline calls it cemented screes. In hand-specimens it resembles the breccia of St. Helens, on the south of the same hill; and also that at Dalton; both referred by Sir R. I. Murchison and Prof. Harkness to Lower Permian strata. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond., Vol. xx., 1864. In places, the Low Haume crab-rock coats the hill-side in varying thickness; but to the east or north-east, the limestone appears to have been quarried back at some time, leaving the breccia standing in great natural buttresses, twelve yards high.

page 338 note 3 There are no boulders, properly so called, along this road. I observed two cobble stones: one, near Greenscow, on low ground, might measure 7 or 8 inches in diameter; the other, built into a wall at Low Haume, would measure less.