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VII.—The Scottish Kames and their Evidence on the Glaciation of Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

J. W. Gregory
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Extract

The word “kame” is regarded by one usage as the Scottish equivalent of the Irish term “esker”; according to another usage, the terms are not synonymous, for an esker is regarded as the British representative of the Swedish “osar” and as a ridge of sand and gravel deposited along the course of a river within a glacier, while a kame is a ridge of similar materials deposited outside the glacier along its edge. The Polmont kame, as seen from the railway, strikingly resembles the Swedish osar; but it and those at Carstairs, the best known of Scottish kames, proved, on examination, not to have the cross-banding characteristic of osar, and to be marginal deposits. The typical Irish eskers are also marginal deposits (Gregory, “The Irish Eskers,” Phil. Trans., A, 210, pp. 115–51) and of the same origin as the Polmont and Carstairs kames. A few small Irish eskers have the structure of osar, while many are the remnants of denuded sheets of sand and gravel. I therefore suggested that the term esker, being Irish in origin, should be applied generally, as it is in Ireland, to hills of glacial sand and gravel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , 1926 , pp. 395 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1926

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References

page 395 note * The etymology and history of the term are summarised by the author in Geogr. Journ., xl, 1912, pp. 169–73Google Scholar.

page 395 note † The singular is often. Anglicised as ose.

page 395 note ‡ Kames are synonymous wilh the “åsar transversaux ou moraines terminales stratifiées,” and the “ose marginale” of Sederholm; e.g. 1899, Bull. Comm. Géol. Finlande, No. 10, p. 11, and pl, and 1911, op. cit., No. 29, p. 12; the latter reference gives a section which agrees fully with that of a typical Scottish or Irish kame.

page 396 note * The map references are mostly to the six-inch quarter sheets of the Ordnance Survey.

page 403 note * D. M. Home states the alt. as 940–970 ft.

page 405 note * [Kames have been referred to as occurring in the Valley, Wick, Geol. Surv. Scot., Mem., Caithness, 1914, p. 129,Google Scholar but, according to Dr Peach, they are moraines.]

page 407 note * On reference of this question to Dr Mackie, I am glad to find that he considers that the successive platforms of northern Elgin have been formed at pauses during the uplift of the country.

page 410 note * [For a tracing of the six-inch Geol. Surv. map of this kame I am indebted to Dr J. Horne.]

page 421 note * I was surprised to find at Gleneagles a patch of sand with marine shell fragments at the height of a little above 500 ft. This had been dropped during the construction of the bunkers; as that level is critical in regard to the height of the sea in late glacial times in eastern Scotland, I inquired as to the source of the sand. Mr D. Matheson kindly had the sand traced, and informs me that it was brought from the Fifeshire coast.

page 425 note * Since this paper was read a Geol. Surv. Memoir has been issued, Sheet 103, Golspie, which briefly describes this kame, and adopts for it (p. 121) an explanation, according to which it would be an ispatinow, as defined on p. 395.