scholarly journals IV.—On the Drifts of the West and South Borders of the Lake District, and on the Three Great Granitic Dispersions

1871 ◽  
Vol 8 (85) ◽  
pp. 303-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Mackintosh

Boulder-scars.—From Maryport to Parkgate, the E. coast of the Irish Sea at intervals exhibits accumulations or concentrations of large boulders, which are locally called scars. They may be seen in all stages of formation, from the denudational area, where they are in course of being left by the washing away of the clayey matrix, to the depositional area, where they have become half-covered with recent sand and shingle. In many places (as between Seascale and near Silecroft) there are so many boulders within a small area as to show that a considerable thickness of the clay must have been removed. With the exception of having tumbled down as the cliffs were undermined and worn back by the sea, many of the boulders may still rest nearly in the positions they occupied in the clay, but (as is evidenced on the coast at Parkgate) others, up to a great diameter, may have been shifted horizontally. Some of the scars exist where the Boulder-clay would appear to have risen up into ridges or mounds, as no clay is now found opposite to them at the base of the sea-cliff. Others are clay and boulder plateaux, visibly connected with the cliff-line. Most of the scars, I believe, are remnants of the great Lower Brown Boulder-clay. The most conspicuous boulder in the scars S.W. of Bootle, is Eskdale-fell granite, accompanied by a little Criffell granite, and a great number of the usual felspathic erratics.

1871 ◽  
Vol 8 (82) ◽  
pp. 158-162
Author(s):  
C. E. de Rance

Between the mountains of North Wales and the sea, occur two terraces, an upper composed of Boulder-day sloping towards the sea, and a lower, consisting of peat and alluvium, but little removed above high-water mark, running far inland, wherebroad valleys like the Vale of Clwyd breach the coast, and where rocky headlands jut into the sea, as the Great and LittleOrmes Heads. The two terraces are almost entirely denuded away, but often the lower one has alone suffered, as between Penmaen Bach and Penmaen Mawr, where a bay in the rocks, so to speak, is filled up with Upper Boulder-clay. It is quite evident that before denudation of the coast took place, the peat plain had a far greater extension than at present, which is proved by the foot of the occurrence of peat and a submarine forest at Rhyl, in borings in the Dee, and around the whole coasts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and southern Cumberland. It is also evident that considerable denudation of Glacial beds had taken place before the period of the old forests, and that the sea-ward prolongations of these beds, which themselves rested on an old sea-bottom, had been denuded away, and that a great plain, or series of plains, formed much of what is now the Irish Sea, before the forests came into existence; the lower terrace now fringing the coasts being the landward edge of this plain. It is nowhere better seen than in the Birket plain, forming the northern portion of the Hundred of Wirral, in North Cheshire. It is bounded to the south by an old pre-Glacial cliff, which abruptly terminates the northerly prolongation of all the numerous longitudinal valleys running with the strike of the Triassic rocks, of which this district is composed, each valley having a steep escarpment facing the west, as described by Professor Hull and myself.


1913 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-321
Author(s):  
R. C. Nightingale

The greater part of the northern side of the parish of Beechamwell consists of marl and chalk with a top-soil of from one to eighteen feet of gravelly sand. The average depth of this is about eight feet. On the top of it there is a layer of turf or of cultivable soil from three-quarters of a foot to a foot and a-half in depth. There is a narrow strip of boulder clay deposit on which ice-scratched, worked flints are found. There is also a tongue of gravel one and a-half-mile long and half-a-mile wide at its widest part. On this, generally, very few worked flints have been found; fragments of pottery in some numbers have been found all over it however. On the edge of this strip, adjacent on the west to the boulder clay, several worked flints have been picked up, and a hoard of about 200 splinters and flakes was found lying between the sand and the turf, a foot deep here.The greater part of the worked flints are found in an area of about half-a-mile square. The axes, whole or in fragments, are found scattered over the whole of the northern half of the parish. The first axe, however, I found was lying beside a path through the old fen that lies on the south side of Beechamwell. The worked flints found near the moraine are of a peculiar grey colour, and nearly all scimitar-shaped.Flints are found in beds in the chalk and are still plentiful on the surface of the soil, although many have been picked off it for building and road-mending. The small area on which the worked flints are so numerous is the highest ground in Beechamwell.


1904 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 504-505
Author(s):  
Edward Greenly

The bare and rocky hill known as Holyhead Mountain is of considerable interest in connection with recent geological events, standing as it does some thirty miles out from the highlands of Carnarvonshire into the Irish Sea Basin; and in such remarkable isolation, for it is much the highest of the five hills which rise above the general level of the platform of Anglesey.Its height is only 721 feet, but so strongly featured is it, especially towards the west, that one feels the term ‘mountain’ to be no misnomer, and can hardly believe it to be really lower than many of our smooth wolds and downs of Oolite and Chalk. Being composed, moreover, of white quartzite (or more properly of quartzite-schist), and being so bare of vegetation, it recalls much more vividly certain types of scenery in the Scottish Highlands than anything in those Welsh mountains that one sees from its sides. Towards the east it slopes at a moderate angle, but a little west of the summit it is traversed by a very strong feature, due to a fault, running nearly north and south, along which is a line of great crags, facing west, and prolonged northwards into the still greater sea cliffs towards the North Stack. Beyond this the land still remains high, but is smoother in outline, a somewhat softer series of rocks extending from the fault to the South Stack, where the high moors end off in great cliffs above the sea.


Author(s):  
J. B. Wilson ◽  
N. A. Holme ◽  
R. L. Barrett

A number of species of ophiuroid are known to occur in dense clusters on the sea-bed. Aggregations of Ophiothrix fragilis (Abildgaard) have been recorded from the English Channel by Allen (1899), Vevers (1951, 1952), Barnes (1955), Ancellin (1957), Cabioch (1961, 1967, 1968), Holme (1966), Warner (1969, 1971), and by Allain (1974). Beds of the same species have been found in the Irish Sea by Jones (1951) and by Brun (1969), on the west coast of Ireland by Könnecker & Keegan (1973) and Keegan (1974), and on the west coast of Scotland, where it is widespread in sea lochs and elsewhere around the coast (McIntyre, 1956, and personal communication, 1975). Records of Ophiothrix fragilis from the North Sea have been summarized by Ursin (1960). In the Mediterranean, aggregations of Ophiothrix quinquemaculata (D.Ch.) have been described by Guille (1964, 1965) from off the south coast of France, and by Czihak (1959) from the Adriatic. Hurley (1959) gives underwater photographs of Ophiocomina bollonsi Farquhar from the Cook Strait, New Zealand. Further examples of aggregation in ophiuroids and other echinoderms are cited by Reese (1966), Mileykovskiy (1967) and by Warner (1978).


1966 ◽  
Vol 6 (44) ◽  
pp. 261-266
Author(s):  
C. B. Crampton

AbstractIn South Wales there is evidence for two phases of intense glaciation and an interglacial phase during the Pleistocene. During the closing stages of the earlier glaciation in the west of the Vale of Glamorgan two overflow channels were cut by melt water from an ice lobe off the Glamorgan upland, abutting against ice from the Irish Sea. During retreat, ice from the Irish Sea and local ice deposited material on the Lower Lias outcrop on which two contrasting soils developed. Soils normally associated with a Mediterranean climate developed locally on the outcrop of the Carboniferous Limestone during the interglacial phase.


1883 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 500-507
Author(s):  
Charles E. De Rance

Striking a radius of 40 miles from Southport, the line will be seen to intersect the sea-coast near the Silurian districts of Ulverstone in North Lancashire, and Colwyn Bay in North Wales. The succession in both cases is very similar, Denbighshire Grits and Flags of the one area corresponding in time to the Coniston Grits and Flags of the other; and just as the Silurians of the Lake District are overlaid by a fringe of Carboniferous Limestone, so the Silurians of Diganwy are overlaid by the Carboniferous Limestone of the Great and Little Ormes Head. Laid upon a floor of Silurian rocks, the Carboniferous Limestone may be regarded as extending continuously under the Irish Sea, and underlying the various Carboniferous and Triassic rocks now occupying Lancashire.


Parasitology ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwendolen Rees ◽  
Jack Llewellyn

The trematode and cestode parasites of fishes inhabiting British coastal waters have been the subject of several studies in the past, but the parasites of deep-sea fishes have received comparatively little attention due probably to the difficulty of obtaining fresh material. In order that such material might be obtained, excursions were made by the junior author in a commercial trawler to some of the deep-sea fishing grounds lying to the west of Ireland, namely, the Irish Atlantic Slope and the Porcupine Bank. Two excursions were made, the first in August 1938 and the second in July 1939, each extending over a period of about 12 days. In addition, a study has been made of the parasites of some fishes from the Irish Sea from 1936 to 1939. The results of both surveys are incorporated in this paper, and the areas investigated are indicated in Table 1.


1870 ◽  
Vol 7 (68) ◽  
pp. 68-73
Author(s):  
D. C. Davies

The Millstone Grit of the North Wales Border follows the eastern slope of the Carboniferous Limestone, from Crickheath and Sweeney, South of Oswestry, to the shores of the Irish Sea; it is also thrown up into the range of hills which the traveller by the Great Western Railway may see to the west of the line between Oswestry and Chester. This range serves as a natural boundary between this part of England and Wales, and forms a second line of natural fortification, strengthened on the English side by numerous outposts of low hills of clay, gravel, and sand, which give place, upon the Welsh side, to precipitous escarpments of Mountain Limestone, beyond which the change in the language, dress, and manners of the people is marked and sudden.


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