of the Ireleth Iron Company's bore-holes at Askham Wood, near Ireleth railway-station, in the basin of the Duddon (it was kindly furnished to me by Mr. Salmon, F.G.S. ; the foot-notes are my own) : —
6. Drifts of Whicham Valley AND BLACKCOMBE.
On the way from Green Road station to Blackcombe, near a hamlet called the Green, a gravel- pit in the side of a mound shows a section of real typical hard pinel with sand-seams. I was informed that in the neighbourhood there was often a considerable thickness of sand under the pinel. On arriving at the mouth of the Whicham Mill ravine, which runs up into the heart of Blackcombe, I was somewhat surprised to find a considerable thickness of pinel graduating upwards into what, for want of a better name, I shall call chip- and splinter-drift. Still higher up, the sides of the ravine seemed to consist of pinel, hard at the bottom, and looser towards the top. Immense boulders of porphyry|| were here and there exposed in the channel of the brook. The boulders were both rounded and angular. The drift higher up the narrow ravine, so far as its nature could be observed, presented the appearance of a mass of triturated slate, clay, and sand. Where the brook from the upland cwm or corry joins the main stream, the drift might pass for Upper Boulder-clay, though it may be only a looser part of the pinel which probably exists underneath. But up to this point it maintains the charater of an undoubted drift. It
Sand 15
- Dark Clay 51
† Gravel, 9; Clay, 3; Quicksand, 6; Clay, 5 23
Quicksand 21
‡ Brown Clay 181
§ Brown Limestone, 6; Brown 1 Clay, 11 ; Limestone, 13; stopped in Brown Clay 30
- Upper Boulder-clay ? 1
† Variegated middle sand and gravel ?
‡ Lower Boulder-clay ?
§ Decomposed limestone, such as is found in the Boulder-clay of some of the Iron-ore pits in the Lindal district ?
|| As protrusions or dykes of porphyry have been found in this neighbourhood, we have no need to suppose that these boulders were carried over Blackcombe from the north.
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