370 CLIMATIC CONDITIONS OF THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 



and Gennnii geologists as the work of glaciers, as follows: "The A'erj^ nu- 

 merous reasons which lead me to ascribe those striated surfiices [at Riiders- 

 dorf] to the action of floating ice and not of glaciers, I intend to bring to- 

 gether in a special article."* In view of the discrepancies of opinion which 

 are seen to prevail among those who have devoted so much time to field 

 work in Northern German^', it appears that at present it is not possible to 

 draw a line on the map marking the limits of the Scandinavian ice-sheet 

 on the south, any more than this can be done on the southeast and east.f 



Similar conditions of luicertainty meet us when endeavoring to connect 

 the Scandina\ian ice sheet with the glaciation of the northern portion of the 

 British Islands ; but the larger number of the most recent observers seem to 

 consider it proved that the glacial covering of Scandinavia did extend to for 

 as to meet and imite with one descending from the Scottish Highlands. In 

 the words of Messrs. Peach and Home, assistants on the Geological Survej' 

 of Scotland : " The results of our previous observations in Shetland and 

 Orkney which have appeared in the Qimrterly Journal of the Geological Sociel// 

 (Vol. XXXV, p. 778, and XXXVI, p. 648) point to the conclusion that 

 during the climax of the Ice Age the Scandinavian and Scotch ice-sheets 

 coalesced on the floor of the North Sea, and that a great portion of this ice- 

 field moved in a north-west direction towards the Atlantic." t 



Furthermore, it is also generally admitted that over considerable portions 

 of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland local glaciers moved from the higher regions 

 towards the lower, striating and polishing the rocks over which they passed, 

 and doing all the ordinary work of ice. § The evidence as to the local gla- 

 ciation is decidedly more complete and convincing than that by which the 

 view of the confluence of the Scotch and Scandinavian ice sheets is supported. 



The entire area covered by ice, accepting the hypothesis that the sheet 



* Schriften der pliys.-ockonom. Gesellschaft zu Konigsberg, Band XVIII. 1877, p. 229. 



+ Those who wisli to have a vivid idea of the complexity of t)ie phenomena in ijuestion are invited to read 

 pp. 92 and 93 of Professor Credner's article " IJber Schichtenstorangeu im Untergnind des Gescliiebelehmes, an 

 Beispielen aus dem nordwestlichen Sachsen iind angrenzenden Landstrichen," in the Zeitschrift der deutschen 

 geologischen Gesellschaft, Band XXXII. 1880. From a short notice in Petermann's Jlittheilungen, 1882, p. 273, 

 of a recent paper by Dathe (not yet received by the present writer) it appears that he now places the southern limit 

 of the glaciated region of North Germany along the line indicated by the following localities : tlie Mittelgebirge, 

 the Sudeten, the Riesengebirge, tbe Erzgebirge, tlie Franken Wald, and the Tliiiringer Wald. (Tliesc mountain 

 ranges are nearly on the line of the 51st parallel.) The original pajier is published in the Jahrbuch der k. preus- 

 sischen geologischen Landesanstalt for 1881, pp. 317-330. 



t Proc. Royal Physical Society of E.linburgh, Vol. VI. 1881, p. 316. 



§ See, for Ireland, Hull's Physical Geograjdiy and Geology of Ireland. London, 1878, p. 211 ; and for the British 

 Isles generally, J. Gcikie's Great Ice Age, London, 1874, and Second Edition, 1877 (piissim). 



