(6) On the Boulder-clay at Hamilton Hill, North of Glasgow

Abstract

With a few other members I visited, on 27th January, 1900, and for the first time, the exposure of Boulder-clay at Hamilton Hill, but unfortunately the section could not be approached on account of the great quantity of material which had slid down the face after the recent heavy rains. An examination of the heaps of boulders lying near, and which had been picked from the clay, showed that the bulk of them were local—say, from within a radius of 10 miles, and that a few more were from as far as Glen Falloch and Loch Garabal granitic area east of Lochfyne-head. What struck me most was the appearance of the clay itself, as it was strongly, though not completely, of the greywacke type, or, in other words, that it had in great part been derived from metamorphic rocks. There are here, then, three remarkable facts:—1st, the stones and boulders are principally local; 2nd, a small number of them are from a distance; and, 3rd, the clay, in bulk, has come from a distance, as well as a large number of small and minute stones. There are no sand-beds in the deposit, and from its uniform colour the conditions which prevailed during its deposition must have been very equable, and must therefore have formed only a single episode in the great glacial epoch. The surrounding district for miles is composed of Carboniferous strata, and therefore the Hamilton Hill Boulder-clay cannot be a so-called “ground-moraine” derived from local rocks. More probably This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract