198 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 
supposition that these facetted pebbles were in some way the result 
of ice action was based on the fact that they were found in beds 
which, on quite independent grounds, were believed to be of glacial 
origin, and this belief would have been in no way affected if the 
facetted stones had been shown to owe their peculiar form to any 
other agency than ice. 
All this while, however, there was on record the deyainere of 
boulders of precisely similar character in glacial boulder clays of 
Post-Tertiary age. In 1879 Professor Credner published an account 
of the scratched stones found in the neighbourhood of Leipzig, (6) in 
which he mentions three types; the first being those on which a 
flat surface had been ground away on one side; the second com- 
prising those on which two or more such surfaces are found meeting 
in obtuse angles; the third, those which show no facets, but are of 
a rounded or sub-angular form, and bear grooves and scratches 
scattered over their surface. It would be impossible to give a better 
classification of the stones found in the boulder beds of the Salt 
Range, and the closeness of resemblance is only enhanced when 
Professor Credner’s detailed description is read. 
This account appears to have been overlooked by all those who 
saw the Salt Range specimens, for which small blame can be laid, 
as the volume of glacial literature is so vast that the greater part 
must remain unread—even by those who devote themselves specially 
to this subject—and the paper might have remained unnoticed in 
this connection had it not been accidentally stumbled on while a 
very different line of research was being pursued. Struck with the 
light it threw on the origin of these curious pebbles I wrote to 
Professor Credner asking for further particulars, and in reply was 
informed that in the collection of the Saxon Geological Survey there 
are a large number of ice-worn stones showing two or more facets, 
meeting at an angle, and that in some these facets were distributed 
round the whole circumference of the stone. He also informs me 
that after a comparison of the specimens in Leipzig with the figures 
and descriptions of Drs Warth (2) and Noetling (7), he considers 
that their nature as glaciated fragments of the same character as 
those of the “griind-morine” of the northern ice-sheet is beyond 
doubt. 
From this it is evident that we have, in Post-Tertiary glacial 
deposits, ice-worn fragments showing all the peculiarities of those 
found in the Permian boulder beds of the Salt Range, and with this 
the last objection to accepting their glacial origin should disappear. 
R. D. OLDHAM. 
REFERENCES. 
1, Blanford, H. F. and W.T., and Theobald, W.—On the geological structure and rela- 
tions of the Talcheer coalfield in the district of Cuttack. Jem. Geol. Surv. Ind., 
i,, pt. i., p. 33 (1859). 
