1868.| On the Post-Tertiary Beds of Norway and Scotland. 461 
the delay arose solely from the state of the weather precluding all 
observation for trial of the specula. 
In their report on this magnificent instrument, presented to the 
Royal Society in April last, the committee pay a well-earned com- 
pliment to Mr. Grubb. After minutely examining and testing it, 
they express their admiration of the perfection of the telescope, 
and of the mechanical contrivances for its adjustment; and they 
add that, considering the contract price and that special works had 
to be erected for the purpose of constructing the instrument, they 
are convinced that Mr. Grubb has been influenced much more by 
the desire of producing a scientific masterpiece than by any prospect 
of pecuniary advantage. 
II. ON THE POST-TERTIARY BEDS OF NORWAY 
AND SCOTLAND. 
By Rev. Henry W. Crossxezy, F.G:S. 
Many of the grave difficulties attending the study of the glacial 
epoch result from two causes: (1) the want of discrimination 
between different members of a whole series of deposits; and (2) 
the looseness of the nomenclature employed. By the “ Glacial 
Epoch” we understand that period intervening between the com- 
mencement and cessation of more rigorous conditions of climate 
than are now prevalent south of the Arctic Circle, and during which 
a large and varied series of clays, sands, and gravels, frequently 
fossiliferous, were accumulated and deposited through the northern 
districts of both hemispheres. These deposits, however, have been 
confusedly heaped together under various general names, and little 
distinction has been drawn between their upper and lower members, 
while the same terms have seldom been used in precisely the same 
sense by investigators at separate localities. It may, e.g., be said 
that certam shells occur in the “ Boulder Clay,” and this may 
mean that they are found fossil, either in the higher or lower bed 
of a series, the members of which were deposited under considerable 
varieties of climate, and have had their position determined by dif- 
ferent oscillations of the earth’s crust. 
The only method of obtaining a clear and comprehensive 
classification of these deposits of the glacial epoch, and solving the 
great problems involved in those recent changes in physical geo- 
graphy with which they are connected, is by instituting a careful 
comparison between their developments in various countries. 
Scotland, Canada, Sweden, and Norway furnish beds containing a 
