Erratic Phenomenon in Fcdlei/s. 223 



hand, and Ben Nevis on the other, have their system of blocks 

 independent of that of Ben Wy vis ; SchihalUen and the Gram- 

 pians have equally theirs, as also the Pentland Hills, the Che- 

 viots between Scotland and England, and the mountains 

 of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; lastly, the mountains 

 which rise above Belfast, those of the county of Wicklow, and 

 Cuilcagh, also seem to me to form so many separate groups, 

 as regards the dispersion of their erratic blocks. But these 

 relations of the blocks to the chains of mountains are only 

 one of the peculiarities of their arrangement ; it is indeed that 

 very one which has been least insisted on, and with which the 

 defenders of the theory of currents have the least occupied 

 themselves ; and yet they ought above everything to have en- 

 deavoured to explain it, because it includes facts the most con- 

 trary to their theory. How is it really possible to attribute 

 to an eruption of the ocean, or to the effects of a continual 

 soulcvevientj the dispersion of different groups of erratic blocks 

 arranged like a fan around each particular system of moun- 

 tains ? How, moreover, is it possible to conceive the exist- 

 ence of so many deep lakes, by whose beds, however, all these 

 currents must nevertheless have passed, in order to perch the 

 erratic blocks on the flanks of the mountains, rather than ac- 

 cumulate them in the bottom of the valleys ? ^ 



A circumstance which further adds to the importance of 

 these scattered blocks and continuous mounds, is, that the 

 valleys in which they are met with have generally their 

 walls more or less worn, rounded, smoothed, polished, and 

 scratched. Now, this particular appearance is evidently to be 

 attributed to the same cause which transported the blocks ; 

 for these two series of facts are everywhere intimately connect- 

 ed together. 



It was in England and in Sweden that the first polished 

 surfaces were observed, and these were everywhere attributed, 

 until recently, to the action of great currents, without any re- 

 gard being paid to the improbability of a current, or rather 

 currents, spouting like springs from the top of all the valley?, 

 and being sufficiently powerful to convey from their place of 

 origin blocks sometimes of immense dimensions. It can easily 

 be imagined, that, at a period when almost all geological pheno- 



