7co 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE, 



RECENT GLACIAL RESEARCHES IN 

 ENGLAND. 



THOSE readers of the Monthly who may 

 be interested in the subject of glacial 

 geology will recall a brief sketch of recent 

 glacial discovery in England published in the 

 December number. The article included a 

 map of the glaciated areas of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, prepared for Prof. G. F. Wright's 

 new book, Man and the Ice Age, by Prof. Percy 

 F. Kendall, of Leeds, England. We have, 

 since the article was published, received a let- 

 ter from Mrs. H. Carvill Lewis, calling atten- 

 tion to " a few slight inaccuracies contained 

 in it." We regret that the whole letter is 

 longer than we can make room for, but we 

 give the most important points of it. " In 

 the first place," Mrs. Lewis writes, " reference 

 is made to the completion of my husband's 

 ' field notes under the joint editorship of the 

 Rev. Dr. Crosskey and Prof. Kendall ' — now 

 of Leeds. The truth of the matter is, that 

 Prof. Kendall's only contribution to the vol- 

 ume is a short introduction containing a re- 

 sume of his own observations during the last 

 three years — many of which seemed to throw 

 light on the vexed questions of British glacial 

 geology which my husband had attempted 

 to solve. To the best of my knowledge, 

 Prof. Kendall never saw my husband's man- 

 uscripts, and the onerous task of arranging 

 the large collection of unfinished papers and 

 diagrams was a labor of love on the part of 

 the Rev. Dr. Crosskey, of Birmingham, who 

 undertook it in compliance with my husband's 

 parting request. The volume in question 

 consists of a full introduction — written partly 

 by Dr. Crosskey and partly by myself — which 

 is followed by notes and observations made 

 by my husband in this country [England, 

 where Mrs. Lewis is at present residing], and 

 then by two appendixes. The first appendix 

 is by Prof. Kendall, as I have said ; and the 

 second, which was compiled by myself at 

 Dr. Crosskey's request, consists of such ab- 

 stracts from my husband's continental work 

 as promised to throw light upon the problem 

 of glacial action in Great Britain. In con- 

 nection with my husband's explorations in 

 Pennsylvania, I may state, in passing, that it 

 was only over the last third of the work that 

 my husband had the pleasure and benefit of 

 Prof. Wright's companionship ; all the forego- 

 ing portion of the terminal moraine was traced 

 by himself alone. Further on in your article 

 I find the remark that, ' upon completing this 

 work [the tracing of the moraine in Pennsyl- 

 vania], the two professors, by previous ar- 

 rangement, divided the work of exploration — 

 Prof. Wright carefully surveying the line 

 westward, etc., while Prof. Lewis went to 

 England to do the work of which we have 



spoken there.' Now as I had the privilege 

 of sharing all Prof. Lewis's thoughts and 

 plans since before he had the honor of 

 making Prof. Wright's acquaintance, I can 

 confidently state that when the work in Penn- 

 sylvania was brought to a close in 1881, 

 my husband had no idea whatever of going 

 to England, and that it was not till the sum- 

 mer of 1884 that he gave the matter serious 

 thought." 



With regard to Prof. Wright's participa- 

 tion in the Pennsylvania survey, Prof. War- 

 ren Upham is quoted in the sketch of Prof. 

 Henry Carvill Lewis, published in The Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly for July, 1889, as say- 

 ing — a statement to which no exception 

 has ever been taken : " Prof. Lewis first 

 became specially interested in the glacial 

 drift and its terminal moraine during the 

 latter part of the year 1880, when, in com- 

 pany with Prof. G. F. Wright, he studied 

 the remarkable osars of Andover, Mass. ; the 

 gravel of Trenton, N. J., containing palaeo- 

 lithic implements ; the drift deposits of the 

 vicinity of New Haven, Conn., under the 

 guidance of Prof. Dana; and, finally, the 

 terminal moraine in eastern Pennsylvania 

 between the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. 

 The following year Profs. Lewis and Wright 

 traversed together the southern border of 

 the drift through Pennsylvania from Belvidere 

 on the Delaware, west-northwesterly more 

 than two hundred miles, across the ridges of 

 the Alleghanies to Little Valley, near Sala- 

 manca, N. Y., and then southwesterly one 

 hundred and thirty miles to the line divid- 

 ing Pennsylvania and Ohio, which it crosses 

 about fifteen miles north of the Ohio River." 

 This fully substantiates Prof. Wright's claim 

 that he accompanied Prof. Lewis in Pennsyl- 

 vania everywhere except through small por- 

 tions of Northampton and Luzerne Counties 

 and through the region extending from Pine 

 Creek in Lycoming County to Olean in New 

 York — or was with him through more than 

 three fourths of the distance. 



It is probably too much to say that Prof. 

 Lewis definitely laid his plans, while engaged 

 with Prof. Wright in the Pennsylvania sur- 

 vey, to make a glacial survey in England 

 like what they were then doing in the United 

 States ; but we understand that the matter 

 was frequently talked over by them, and 

 was more than once introduced by Prof. 

 Lewis. His subsequent work was exactly 

 in the line of what he had often said re- 

 mained to be done in Great Britain and ought 

 to be done. 



Mrs. Lewis makes some criticisms of the 

 map published with Prof. Kendall's article, 

 and protests that it " must not, in any sense, 



