Oct. 1, 1866.] 



HARDWICO'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



235 



GEOLOGY. 



Stones on Mountains.— Mr. Nield suggests 

 (p. 1S5) that the loose masses of rough sharp 

 Stones that cover the sides and summit of Hel- 

 vellyu are referable to the Pleistocene age, and are 

 the result of glacial action. He writes of similar 

 appearances on Oldham Edge ; but we have lived 

 upon it for more than thirty years, and have 

 hitherto failed to detect any appearance of glacial 

 action. But suppose similar appearances do exist 

 on Oldham Edge, it does not follow that glacial 

 drift has caused the phenomenon alluded to on 

 Helvellyn! And, moreover, geological facts are 

 against the theory. Helvellyn is 3,055 feet above 

 the sea-level, while the highest point that the 

 glacial drift attained in that locality is some 1,400 

 feet above the same level, and this occurs where it 

 passes over the Pennine chain at the Pass of Stain- 

 moor. But, while the glacial drift is very local in 

 its character, these loose stones occur, more or 

 less, in detached masses all over the world, irre- 

 spective of glacial drift, and in many cases hundreds 

 of miles away from it. Having passed the Pennine 

 chain, this drift seems to have traversed in a 

 southerly direction, " the vale of the Tees to Bed- 

 car, and the vale of York to the Humber." And 

 then again it can be traced by Lancaster, and the 

 narrow tract between the- mountains and the sea, 

 crossing the basins of the Lune, Bibble, Wyre, 

 Mersey, and the Dee, and spreading into the valleys 

 of the Severn and the Trent ; so that the glacial 

 drift in Britain is very local in its character, and 

 confined to the low lands and valleys, while these 

 "loose masses of rough sharp stones" are uni- 

 versal, being found alike on the summits and sides 

 of mountains, on broad expansive plains, as well as 

 in the deep valleys. Then we must look to some 

 other agent as the probable cause of this apparently 

 strange phenomenon, and, in our humble opinion, 

 that agent is the action of the waves. Sir Charles 

 Lyell says ("Elements of Geology," p. 65) that 

 " every portion of the land becomes in its turn a 

 line of coast, and is exposed to the action of the 

 waves and the tides." It is to denudation, then, 

 of which these loose stones are the only remnants, 

 the lighter and less coherent strata of sands, shales, 

 gravels, and clays, having been all carried away by 

 the agent above alluded to. That they do not 

 show evidence of being "water-worn" is easily 

 accounted for in their long exposure to disintegra- 

 tion, produced by air and water, sun and frost, and 

 chemical decomposition. One has only to go to 

 Scarborough to have ocular demonstration that de- 

 nudation is going on still; for there, at the foot of 

 Castle Hill, and all along the south shore as far 

 almost as Caton Bay, these "loose masses of rough 

 sharp stones " are being produced on a pretty large 



scale. One will see between Elamborough and 

 Specton, cliffs rising to the altitude of those on the 

 Kentish coast, which have gained for our island the 

 name of Albion, all being indiscriminately washed 

 away, and the debris, with the exception of these 

 huge calcareous sandstone blocks, which are left 

 confused and isolated on the beach, being trans- 

 ported into the ravines and the hollows of the 

 German Ocean. And this is the manner in which 

 the mountains, hills, and rough asperities of our 

 earth have for bygone ages been levelled, leaving 

 nought to testify that they have once existed, save 

 these loose solitary and gloomy stones. But for the 

 geologist there are many proofs that the tops of 

 mountains, hills, aud high table-lands, have been 

 eroded and washed away to a very considerable 

 extent, by denudation. We have evidence that the 

 tops of the seven hills of Rome once formed the 

 bottoms of valleys. Professor Ramsay has shown 

 (" Survey of Great Britain ") that the missing beds 

 removed from the summits of the Mendips in 

 Somerset have been nearly a mile in thickness. 

 Where our own house stands on Oldham Edge, we 

 have proof, by the presence of a fault in the coal- 

 measures, that the surface was once at least 300 

 yards higher than it is at present. It is these de- 

 posits from the ruins of hills and mountains spread 

 so extensively and abundantly over the surface of 

 our globe, that Mr. Nield seems to be confounding 

 with the "glacial drift." The glacial drift has an 

 opposite tendency, and instead of laying them bare, 

 and exposing them to our view, wherever it comes 

 in contact with them, it actually buries them from 

 our sight, so that they are never found in the state 

 we find them on Helvellyn, except in places where 

 the glacial drift has never made its appearance. 

 The greatest number of these "loose masses of 

 rough sharp stones " that we have ever seen in our 

 pedestrian travels, has been on the numerous hills of 

 Derbyshire, and more especially on and in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Axe-Edge, where we have seen them 

 in numbers so vast, that if collected and piled into 

 aheap, they would form a little mountain of them- 

 selves, yet Axe-Edge is 3,000 or 4,000 feet above 

 the reach of the glacial drift, even if there had been 

 any in the whole county, which we believe there 

 is not. Axe-Edge is elevated 3,100 feet above the 

 level of Derby, and it appears like an island in the 

 midst of "a sea of hills," yet there is scarcely one 

 where these loose stones are not to be found — 

 James Wild, Pleasant Sfrring, Oldham Edge, 



Eossil Elephants.— All the great river basins 

 of Germany have, like those of the Neckar, yielded 

 fossil bones of the elephant; those especially 

 abutting on the Rhine are too numerous to be men- 

 tioned, nor is Canstadt the only place in the 

 Neckar valley where they have been found.— 

 Cutler. 



