TRANSACTIONS
OF THE
HULL
GEOLOG ICAL
SOCIETY
ABSTRACTS OF LECTURES.
THE EARLY RACES OF
Commencing with Eolithic man as the earliest of
English races, the lecturer exhibited a specimen of the unique implements of
the plateau race. This race and the subsequent river-drift and cave-men have
left no trace in Yorkshire, but Mr. Home was able to add to the interest
which surrounds the Neolithic race by exhibiting a photo of a skull of very
early type found by him in Wensleydale, and by his descriptions of his other
discoveries in the same neighbourhood, including Bronze Age weapons from the
Lady Algetha Cave and Roman Pottery and other later objects adding to the
knowledge of Bronze age men ("Ancient Britons") and the Romano-British
people of this country.
THE PAST HISTORY OF THE
The modern theory of the origin of River Systems
is--given a large area of land having a general slope to the sea, a river
system will be formed in the general direction of the slope. These rivers
are known as "Primary," their course is fairly direct and they receive
tributaries from the more elevated regions between them. These tributaries
are known as “Secondaries”. The general result of the denudation of this
area is to form longitudinal valleys connecting the primary streams and more
or less at right angles to the latter. If any one of two primary streams
flows at a lower level than the other the waters of the latter will
generally be captured by the former on the lines of the longitudinal
valleys. Applying this to the case of the Trent, we see that, assuming the
land to the West of the Chalk and Oolitic beds to have been much higher
formerly than at present and that the Humber and Trent were primary streams
(the former reaching the sea as at present, and the latter by way of Lincoln
Gap to the Wash) both having tributaries draining, amongst other districts,
the area between Newark and Alkbro, the Trent was captured by the Humber
along the longitudinal valley formed through a group of tributaries of the
Humber having denuded the intermediate Keuper strata. The lecturer referred
to the historic references to the Fenland and Trent floods, and he shewed
that so far as History goes it confirmed his theory.
SOME ALPINE GLACIERS. BY, PERCY F. KENDALL ESQ.,
F.G.S:, Vice-President of the Society and Professor of Geology,
Mr. Kendall stated that his lecture was mainly based
on the results of observations of glaciers, moraines, etc., made during his
last visit to the Alps, July-August,1895. Commencing with a series of views
of the Jura, he pointed out the, morainic mounds with an occasional erratic
block to which we owe the present advanced state of Glaciology. Passing on
to the Zermatt district, he had placed upon the screen an excellent set of
photographs he had taken, of the Gorner, Grenz, Schwarze, Theodule, Furgg
and Zmutt Glaciers, shewing excellent examples of lateral and medial rock
trains, one of the latter rising in the middle of the glacier without any
visible means of supply. The lecturer pointed out the curious effect of a
dry lake in the ice becoming a hill, through having its bed covered with
gravel and thus afforded some protection from the rays of the sun while the
surrounding ice is undergoing ablation. He also dealt with the crevasses
shewing how the morainic matter was engulfed and disgorged by them and how
it formed gravelly beds interstratified with the glacier itself. A unique
photograph of a glacier at work upon the live rock which he had taken at
considerable risk, shewing the churning up of mud, fragments of rock, etc, a
lecture on glaciation in itself, the floating icebergs of the Marjelen See
and the enormous moraines of Ivrea were also shewn and explained.
Copyright Hull Geological Society 2016