THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 789 



gravel in places from three to four hundred feet higher than the 

 beds of limestone rock which are from two to ten miles off. Debris 

 of red sandstone is also found much higher than the parent rock. 

 Bowlders of Shap granite, Mr. Kendal tells us, have passed over 

 Stainmoor by tens of thousands, and in doing so have been carried 

 about two hundred feet above their source ; and the curious Per- 

 mian rock, " Brockram," has been carried in the same direction no 

 less than a thousand feet higher than its highest point of origin.* 

 In Scandinavia there are still more striking examples, erratic 

 blocks having been found at an elevation of forty-five hun- 

 dred feet which could not possibly have come from any place 

 higher than eighteen hundred feet, f We thus find clear and 

 absolute demonstration of glacier ice moving up-hill and drag- 

 ging with it rocks from lower levels to elevations varying from 

 two hundred to twenty-seven hundred feet above their origin. 

 In Switzerland we have proof of the same general fact in the 

 terminal moraine of the northern branch of the Rhone glacier 

 being about two hundred feet higher than the Lake of Geneva, 

 with very much higher intervening ground. As it is universally 

 admitted that the glacier of the Rhone did extend to beyond 

 Soleure, all the a priori objections to the various cases of rocks 

 carried much higher than their origin, in America, the British 

 Isles, and Scandinavia, fall to the ground. We must either deny 

 the existence of the ice-sheet in the great Swiss valley, and 

 find some other means of accounting for the traveled blocks on 

 the Jura between Geneva and Soleure, or admit that the lower 

 strata of a great glacier can travel up-hill and over hill and valley, 

 and that the ice-sheets of the British Isles, of Scandinavia, and of 

 North America merely exhibit the very same characteristics as 

 those of Switzerland, but sometimes on a larger scale. We may 

 not be yet able to explain fully how it thus moves, or what slope 

 of the upper surface is required in order that the bottom of the 

 ice may move up a given ascent, but the fact of such motion can 

 not any longer be denied. 



The facts thus established render it more easy for us to accept 

 one of the latest conclusions of British glacialists. A great sub- 

 mergence of a large portion of the British Isles during the Glacial 

 period, or in the interval between successive phases of the Glacial 

 period, has long been accepted by geologists, and maps have been 

 often published showing the small group of islands to which 

 our country was then reduced, the supposed subsidence being 

 about fourteen hundred feet. The evidence for this is the oc- 

 currence, at a few spots, of glacial gravels containing marine 



* Wright's Man and the Glacial Period, p. 154. 



f James Geikie's Great Ice Age, second edition, p. 404. 



