116 M. Ch. Martins' Remarks on M. Durocher'^s Memoir 



under the appearance of vast deposits with a flat surface, 

 sometimes under that of terraces rising in steps one above 

 another, or in the form of elevations of banks or elongated 

 hills, known by the name of osars (the sandosars of the 

 Swedes). Among the mountains, it forms irregular masses, 

 without any determinate geometrical figure. Instead of en- 

 deavouring to discover characteristic marks which might illus- 

 trate the nature of these different deposits, M. Durocher con- 

 fines himself to a description of their form, and that of the 

 materials composing them, as if that form, and the greater 

 or less proportion of sand, pebbles, angular or rounded blocks, 

 were of themselves sufficient to reveal their origin to us. In 

 his first Memoir, he seemed to separate the osars from the 

 other transported formations, and to admitj^ith Mr Lyell, 

 that their origin is more recent. In the present Memoir, this 

 distinction is not observed, and the author no longer attempts 

 to determine whether they contain shells, and if these shells 

 are identical with those now living in the neighbouring seas, 

 cr rather, whether they belong to the icy ocean, or to warmer 

 seas. On no occasion does he make the slightest allusion to 

 the absence or presence of those rubbed and striated pebbles* 

 which are so characteristic of moraines. The result is, that 

 the reader, after perusing this chapter, cannot form. the slight- 

 est idea of the nature and origin of these deposits, so different 

 from each other. However, before M. Durocher's publica- 

 tion, the results of MM, Hisinger,t Lyell, J Keilhau,| and, at 

 a later period, those of MM. Forchammer,]! Loven, and Desor, 

 have thrown some light upon this chaos. 



Under the name of transported deposits, M. Durocher has 

 united, in the same denomination, three very distin^ct forma- 

 tions: — 1*^, The ancient moraines, which he describes (page 64) 



* These pebbles had already been described in 1842, in the Edinburgh Neiv 

 Philosophical Journal, p. 223, and in the Bibliotheque Universelle, t. xli., p. 125. 

 t Antekninger i Physik och Geognosie, t. iv. 



I On the proofs of the gradual rising of the land in certain parts of Sweden. 

 Phil. Trans., 1835 ; and in French, Memoires de la Societe des Sciences Naturelles 

 de Neuchdtel, t. i., p. 200. 



§ Nyt Magazin for Naturviderskaberne, t. iii., p. 169. 1842. 



II The Athenseum, No. 987, 26th September 1846, p. 1003. 



