WCP2798

[1]

Chapel Weston

Leeds

8.2. [19]00

My dear Sir,

I am sorry that I neglected to answer your enquiry about the writing on the back of your photos of the Barmouth grooves. I do not recognise it but have a suspicion that they are the work of some Birmingham man ^{by the way the grooves are} those shown in my photo.

The water emerged directly from base of the ice-lobe of the Gorner glacier so far as I could [2] Judge, & without any interval or air space. My photograph was taken well towards the close of a hot day when he river Visp¹ had risen probably two feet above its early morning level. The deep shadows & the turmoil of the water made accurate observation very difficult.

The perched Silurian boulder has probably travelled not more than a mile but it is a significant fact that many of the blocks occur at an altitude at least [3] 50 feet (by measurement) above the highest portion of the outcrop of the parent rock.

An analogous fact is recorded by M^r Lamplugh² regarding great masses of Specton Clay (Neocomian) which are embedded in the Boulder-clay of the cliffs at Flamborough Head. The highest outcrop of the parent rock is at but little above sea-level at Specton qet and very considerably below the transported masses and at Flamborough].

I have not yet received the promised photograph of a terminal [4] moraine. Professor Watts³ has written to say there is more in the possession of the Geological Photographs Committee.

I have written to Prof. G. A. J. Cole⁴ of Dublin & to Prof. Lebour⁵ of Newcastle to see if either can put me in communication with a photographer possessing a portrait of a good terminal moraine. I know that there are exquisite examples in the Cherists???.

The prints bearing Mr Bingley's⁶ name are from his own negatives. I enclose herewith two negatives of which good blocks [5] could be obtained.

The glass one I have had taken according to promise. It well portrays a very characteristic boulder of Rhomb-porphyry⁷ found embedded in boulder-clay at an altitude of 810 ft. above sea level on West Rigg near Stanghow on the northern face of the Cleveland Hills. The rock is perfectly unmistakable by reasons of the great rhomb- [6] shaped sections of felspar which it displays. It covers an area of some thousands of square miles around the head of Christiania Fjord.

The flexible negative is one of the great gorges either the Aarschlucht or the Gorge du Triente — if the former as I suspect you will, I dare say, be able to recognise it.

Yours faithfully

Percy B. Newdall [signature]

A. R. Wallace Esq.