1903. Coi,K. — A Geological Renaissa7icc. 121 



northern erratics, were originally deposited, side by side with 

 the shells, by icebergs in an open sea. What is admissible at 

 the opening of the glacial epoch is Tound to be inadmissible 

 later, because an extension of the sea, rather than an extension 

 of the land-ice, would be required. The Kill clay^ then, was 

 deposited under marine conditions in the floor of an Irish sea 

 of much the same dimensions as the present one, and must 

 therefore have been fished up and moved into its present 

 position by solid ice, because there is no evidence of any 

 extension of the sea. When we find it candidly admitted that 

 the general trend of the striae formed by the great ice-sheet at 

 the epoch of maximum glaciation does not support this 

 supposition of the inflow of ice from the Irish Sea, we are led 

 to ask whether the arguments from the Kill area cannot be 

 used in an exactly opposite direction.* Why is the presence 

 of northern erratics (p. 47) fatal to a marine origin for the 

 shelly beds in general, when they are admissible and satis- 

 factory in the case of Kill ? No one will now deny, least of 

 all after Mr. I^amplugh's enlightening survey, that solid ice 

 banked itself against the Leinster Chain, and that its burden 

 of detritus became ultimately mingled with all the previous 

 drifts. But, in view of the great earth-movements postulated 

 by continental glacialists for vScandinavia and the northern 

 seas, we feel inclined to ask why Ireland shared in none of 

 these. If we are told that the shelly deposits are only found 

 along the coast, we can provisionall}^ accept this assertion, and 

 erect in imagination a barrier of inland ice, which acted as a 

 margin to the temporary extension of the sea. The extreme 

 lucidity and fairness of Mr. Lamplugh's statements makes us 

 very willing to accept them. The foregoing remarks are 

 chiefly prompted by the extreme reluctance of British 

 glacialists to believe in even moderate earth-movements since 

 the close of Pliocene times. Seeing that the whole Wealdeu 

 arch was formed and denuded since the deposition of the 

 Lenham Beds, and that the Irish Sea has widened and shrunk 

 again conspicuously in post-glacial days, we think that this 

 view of the permanence of levels throughout our islands in a 

 particular epoch is, to say the least, illogical. This was the 

 epoch, moreover, that saw the destruction of a north-western 

 continent, ihe consolidation of the Alpine core, and the birth 

 of Italy from Mediterranean waves. 



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