Hog-Wallows and Prairie Mounds

Abstract

JUDGING from the descriptions of these deposits, they must be nearly, if not quite, identical with those which I described in a paper on “The Ancient Glaciers North and East of Llangollen,” read at the British Association, 1865. These are a series of heaps of glacial drift covering more or less completely the habitat of Cheshire Cheese, i.e, the Vale Royal itself, and the slopes which extend from it to those Welsh Mountains that are so prominently seen from Chester. These mounds vary in size and shape according to their position. They are very well defined and numerous in the valley of the Alyn, between Wrexham and Mold, where they have the form of oblong hog-back mounds usually lying parallel to each other with their longer axes (if I may use the term) nearly at right angles to the general slope of the surface. They may be counted by hundreds, and in some parts are so near together as to form a series of connected undulations. They are largest and most abundant opposite the mouths of the lateral valleys opening into the main valley of the Alyn. Their origin is well indicated in these positions, by the manner in which they lie opposite the mouths of the valleys at right angles to the course of the present streams.