The Recent Irish Glaciers. 239 



the escarpment above not breaking np in large pieces. At the 

 beginning of the thaw the detritus ran down all the way to 

 the wall between the pasture and the tillage, but as the ground 

 melted they stopped on the pasture, so that, when the frost 

 was gone, they had to be carted off. There was a tradition 

 in the place that in old times no rent was to be paid for the 

 townland if there were snow after the first of March. 



In my description in the Memoirs of the Geological 

 Survey of the drift of the mountainous districts examined 

 by me, various ridges and stacks of blocks will be found 

 mentioned, the origin of which I could not then satisfactorily 

 state or even suggest. This is specially the case in the low, 

 but hilly granite ground, between Galway Bay and the valley 

 from Clifden to Oughterard. 



Experience, however, teaches, and after seeing what took 

 place in the Co. Wicklow during a winter of heavy snow, the 

 origin of such ridges and stacks dawned on me. Subsequently 

 I saw in the cuttings of the Canadian Pacific as it crossed the 

 Rockies, in the Kicking Horse Pass, well-exposed sections of 

 these snow-drifts and nev6 marginal remains. What is to be 

 seen there is most instructive, as it fully explains our Irish 

 recent glaciers. At the time of my visit to the "Foot Hills" 

 of the Rockies the snow-drifts were gone for the season, but 

 the terminal moraines were there, being more or less similar 

 to the Irish ones; higher up in the Rockies the drifts and their 

 moraines were intact, so that the railway cuttings exposed 

 good sections. My visit to Canada was so short that my 

 conclusions can scarcely be of much value. Yet it was long 

 enough to explain points in the Irish drift phenomena 

 previously inexplicable. 



While stationed in the Co. Cork I had a rare opportunity, 

 during an exceptionally hard winter, of studying the recent 

 ice and glacier work, but unfortunately I did not avail myself 

 of it, but ran out of the county and did not return till March. 

 It was not till I went to Connaught that I saw what I ought 

 to have previously seen ; and subsequently, on all occasions, 

 when in the vicinity of hills, they were visited in the snow 

 and thaw. Anyone interested in the phenomena could not 

 do better than spend a week or fortnight at Fogarthey's Hotel, 

 Drumgoff, Glenmalure, as he would be within an easy tramp 

 of the summit of Slieve-na-gollian, and from it study the 

 peculiarities of snow-drifts. He should go up the valley to 



