18411882] ICE-ACTION 169 



Southampton in some manner connected with the angular Letter 514 

 gravel, but had not strength enough to make out relations. 

 It might be worth your while to bear in mind the possibility 

 of fine sediment washed over and interstratified with thick 

 beds of frozen snow, and therefore ultimately dropped irre- 

 spective of the present contour of the country. 



I remember as a boy that it was said that the floods of 

 the Severn were more muddy when the floods were caused 

 by melting snow than from the heaviest rains ; but why this 

 should be I cannot see. 



Another subject has interested me much viz. the sliding 

 and travelling of angular debris. Ever since seeing the 

 "streams of stones' at the Falkland Islands, 1 I have felt 

 uneasy in my mind on this subject. I wish Mr. Kerr's notion 

 could be fully elucidated about frozen snow. Some one ought 

 to observe the movements of the fields of snow which supply 

 the glaciers in Switzerland. 



Yours is a grand book, and I thank you heartily for the 

 instruction and pleasure which it has given me. 



For heaven's sake forgive the untidiness of this whole 

 note. 



To John Lubbock [Lord Avebury]. Letter 515 



Down, Nov. 6th, 1881. 



If I had written your Address 2 (but this requires a fearful 

 stretch of imagination on my part) I should not alter what I 

 had said about Hicks. You have the support of the President 

 [of the] Geolog. Soc., 3 and I think that Hicks is more likely 

 to be right than X. The latter seems to me to belong to the 

 class of objectors general. If Hicks should be hereafter proved 

 to be wrong about this third formation, it would signify very 

 little to you. 



1 Geological Observations on South America (1846), p. 19 et seq. 



2 Address delivered by Lord Avebury as President of the British 

 Association at York in 1881. Dr. Hicks is mentioned as having classed 

 the pre-Cambrian strata in " four great groups of immense thickness 

 and implying a great lapse of time" and giving no evidence of life. 

 Hicks' third formation was named by him the Arvonian (Quart, Journ. 

 Geol. Soc., Vol. XXXVII., 1881, Proc., p. 55). 



3 Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., President of the Geological Society in 

 1880-81, 



