1861-1862 GLACIAL THEORY OF LAKE-BASINS 269 



congenial task, and to commit to writing the thoughts 

 and conclusions which had been shaping themselves 

 in his mind for several years past regarding the origin 

 of lake-basins. This problem in physical geography 

 had never been seriously attacked, and no tenable 

 solution of it had yet been proposed. It was his 

 experience in Canada, and the sight of the lake- 

 sprinkled surface of the ancient gneiss of that region 

 which first definitely called Ramsay's attention to 

 this subject, though he had returned from America 

 still in the belief that the older and greater glaciation 

 was accomplished by floating ice during a time of 

 submergence. But the recognition to which he had 

 now come, that that glaciation was the work of the 

 grinding action of stupendous sheets of land-ice, gave 

 an entirely new turn to his thoughts regarding the 

 terrestrial contours of glaciated regions. In his jour- 

 neys in Wales, Scotland, and Switzerland he was now 

 always on the watch for facts bearing on the con- 

 nection between the traces of ice-movement and the 

 contours of the ground over which the ice had moved. 

 He had at last come to the conclusion that the pro- 

 digious abundance of lakes in the glaciated regions 

 of the northern hemisphere could not be accounted for 

 unless they were connected in some way with ice- 

 action, and he inferred that in a vast number of cases, 

 where the lakes lie in rock-basins, these basins have 

 actually been scooped out by the grinding power of 

 land-ice. These observations and inferences he now 

 proceeded to elaborate as a paper for the Geological 

 Society. 



Before the paper was ready, however, the presi- 

 dency of the Society was vacant, and there was a 

 general feeling that it should be offered to Ramsay, 



