GLACIAL ACTION. 55 



large glaciers covered certain portions of Central America during 

 the glacial period, and the conditions induced by these are said 

 to account for the presence of boulder-clay in valleys and certain 

 hog-backed hills, as well as the transportation of large scratched 

 boulders, noticed in some of the countries on either side of the 

 central chain.* Mr. Belt states that the presence of glaciers in 

 Central America would afford a solution of many phenomena that 

 otherwise would be inexplicable. After mentioning the main 

 points in favour of the existence of glaciers, he adds that the 

 scarcity of alluvial gold in the valley of Santa Domingo, and 

 other places in Nicaragua, points in the same direction. Glacier 

 ice scoops out all the contents of the valleys, and in deepening 

 them does nor sort the materials like running water, or the 

 action of the waves upon the sea coast. As regards gold-bearing 

 quartz, when the denuding agent was water, the rocks were worn 

 away and the heavier gold was left behind, at the bottom of the 

 alluvial deposits ; but when the denuding agent was glacier ice, 

 the stony masses and their metallic contents were carried away 

 or mingled together in the unassorted moraines. The evidence 

 of glacial action, if they exist at all in British Honduras, must 

 be looked for in the higher mountain valleys in the west, and 

 possibly in those of the Cockscomb Mountains, or their spurs to 

 the south. If, as was supposed, ice covered the higher ranges 

 and descended in great glaciers only as low as the line of country 

 now standing at two thousand feet above the sea, then very 

 little of the actual surface of British Honduras would have been 

 subject to direct glacial action. It is, however, quite possible 

 that the transportation of rocks from the central chain and their 

 distribution over the sea bottom so as to form the foundations of 

 the country, may have been accomplished by floating icebergs. 



* " The Naturalist in Nicaragua," pp. 259-274. 



