Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886British Association for the Advancement of Science
History
Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886
British Association for the Advancement of Science
Birmingham (England); Natural history -- England -- Birmingham
The question has been raised whether, since the basalt readily
develops joints, these grooves may not be rudimentary joints, or
whether disintegration may not have taken place along certain lines
which have gradually become grooves. I entertain no doubt, however,
of their glacial origin. No other explanation than that the grooves
were the work of moving ice can account, I think, for their excellent
polish, their frequent parallelism, their adaptation to the hollows and
protuberances of the blocks they cross, and their predominant trend
from north-east to south-west. The absence of erratics from the boulder
clay in which the grooved basaltic blocks are embedded is evidence of
local ice action at Rowley Hill. It is notable also that angular blocks
of basalt from Rowley Hill have been found in Birmingham, blocks which
must have travelled at least six miles.
It is often difficult to decide the precise age of the boulder clays
of the district; and whether any individual bed is referred to the
upper or the lower series is more dependent upon the glacial theories
that may be adopted than upon any observations that can be made in
the field. A _Boulder Clay_, of a typical kind, has been exposed at
a brickyard, at the bottom of Oak Street, Wolverhampton. This clay
contains an extraordinary number and variety of erratic blocks, without
question from the Lake District and south of Scotland, a few flints,
together with pebbles from the Bunter beds. One of the sides of a
boulder of felsite, measuring 11 × 3 × 3ft., is flat and smooth, and
covered with parallel striæ. The sands and gravels rising in small
hillocks near the Cemetery, and slightly covering the clay of the
pit, are probably Middle glacial. A boulder clay, formerly exposed
at Icknield Street, Birmingham, while presenting the same physical
characteristics as the Wolverhampton clay, differed from it widely in
the nature of the embedded erratic blocks. Instead of having travelled
from the Lake District or Scotland, a large proportion were derived
from rocks that occur _in situ_ at the Berwyn and Arenig Hills. The
condition of the New Red Sandstone ridge, against which this boulder
clay rested, was remarkable. The sandstone rock was broken up, and
large fragments of it were lifted out of their position and thrust into
the middle of the drift.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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