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HAVING lived long on the chalk of East Anglia, looking 

 down upon marsh land and post-tertiary deposits, when a thirst 

 at length seized me to see glacial action, and judge for myself 

 of its power and extent, the geologist will understand that it 

 behoved me to go far afield. Not that all evidences of the 

 reign of ice had perished in the neighbourhood. In many 

 fields where the sheep were quietly eating turnips, and by many 

 gate-posts of the country where the careful farmers had placed 

 them to stave off waggon wheels, large boulders of trap and 

 granite told that wondrous tale of the Drift, which never fails 

 to captivate imagination even in the most commonplace 

 scenery. Every here and there, too, were beds of boulder 

 clay in the neighbourhood, filled with that curious assortment 

 of heterogeneous pebbles characteristic of the formation. But 

 a still handier geological museum lay open to understanding 

 eyes in every stone-heap by the roadside. Landowners in this 

 district employ village urchins, when not "tenting" birds, to 

 gather up the loose boulders and stones scattered over their 

 fields during the drift period. These stones are of all sizes 

 between a marble and a man's head, and, being of hard com- 

 position, are greatly valued in a country of " cork " (as the 

 natives term chalk) for mending roads. Hence it is that the 

 practical geologist finds problems in every stone-heap ; and. as 

 he ponders on the only causes which offer a probable explana- 

 tion of the difficulties connected with the transport of these 

 northern strangers to the chalk formation, eager longings beset 

 him to visit the North, from which these intruders came. The 



