GLACIAL MAN.— SKERTCIILY. 145 



Now I found that, though most of the boulder-claj- (where 

 thick) was made up of the detritus of distant rocks, much of 

 the lower part was largely composed of fragments of the 

 local rocks. This is exactly what must be the case if the ice 

 were grinding over the surface of the ground, and precisely 

 what could not possibly occur if the ice were simply floating 

 over it. This my critics had not yet realised. The evidence 

 was further obscured by the soluble character of chalk. It is 

 fairly soft and takes glacial striae beautifully, but, alas, carbon 

 dioxide dissolved in rain-water has no reverence for geological 

 records but avidly neutrahses the acidity it suffers from by 

 impartially absorbing chalk whether in glacial beds or in the 

 parent rock. We folk got to recognise these well-licked relics 

 of the boulder-clay even when they got into post-glacial 

 gravels. In certain lights you could faintly trace the relics of 

 the old striae; these chalk pebbles had become palimpsests 

 which you could decijaher if you knew the language ; A. C. 

 Ramsay used to call them ghosts. Finally these chalk errants 

 lost every trace of their glacial travels. 



I found that over a good deal of Norfolk and Suffolk — 

 chalk country — the Chalky Boulder Clay was often much more 

 chalk than clay, more especially at its base. Over the area 

 round Brandon in both covinties the boulder-clay has been 

 almost completely removed, but I found its remains j)reserved 

 in hollows in the chalk surface, sometimes but a trace being 

 left which one had well-nigh to accept by faith and not by 

 sight. It was this very chalky, much denuded, badly dissolved 

 clay that I offered them as the real article ; naturally they 

 would not have it at any cost. But where, as at Culford, 

 the boulder-clay was thick and im.mistakable they accepted 

 it and the Brandon Beds unconditionally. But the flint tools 

 in the latter — well, they had to be explained away if they 

 could not be explained. They were too few (at Culford two 

 flakes only) to found such startling theory upon. They must 

 have got in by accident ; perhaps after all they were not 

 really of man's handicraft. Short of deliberately accusing me 

 of fabrication (in a double sense) they went through every 

 conceivable logical contortion to obliterate their existence. 



The Brandon Beds are a set of gravels, sands, loams, and 

 clays, the most characteristic being pale-coloured, fine-grained 

 loams, which, being suitable for brick-making in this clayless 

 area, have been sought out and utilised. For the most part 



