May 24, 1894J 



NA TURE 



79 



The North Sea Ice Sheet. 

 In his letter in Nature, May 3 (p. 5), my friend Prof. 

 Hu);hcs calls aiteniion to a most important fact. In archa;- 

 oli'g) it has long been known how necessary it is to make sure 

 thai not only the exact provenance of an oltject is ascertained, 

 but also that when found it was in situ, and was not the result 

 of a later disturbance of the ground. Thus Mr. Franks has a 

 prii-kct candlestick, made at Limoges, which was found several 

 Jeet deep in gravel at Calcutta, and this st>ange fact was only 

 explained when it was discovered that the gravel in question was 

 hatlast, which had been dredged from the 'I'hames, deposited in 

 the hold of a vessel, an'l redepo-iled at Calcutta. The same 

 caution is more especially needed in geology. Prof. Hughes 

 deiicribes the foreign ballast which he saw stranded on our east 

 coast, and warns us of the very wrong inferences that may be 

 deduced from it. I would add 10 his statement that it was the 

 custom of the old Danish pirates to use blocks of stone as 

 anchors, and thus no doubt some foreign boulders have found 

 their way to the east coast of Britain. 



Here we seem to have an explanation of the occurrence of so- 

 called Norwegian boulders on the V'orkshire coast between Hull 

 and .'Scarborough and at Cleethorpes, ami which, oddly enough, 

 are not found in Scotland, though so much nearer Scandinavia. 

 It must be leniembered that the mother rocks from which 

 these Scandinavian boulders aresupposed to have been d-jtached 

 do not ocLUr on the western tl.anks of the Norwegian mountains 

 at all. In this behalf I will quote Mr. Carvell Williams, him- 

 self a believer in some ultra-glacial views. He describes these 

 boulders as consisting of the "typical augite syenite, which 

 occurs only at Lange>und Fiord, near Hreng, and also porphyry 

 anil granite from the same region. All of t)u'se rochs, he says, 

 came out of the .skagar Rack, and were brought by a glacier 

 going south from Chnsiiaiiia and then soulh-wcst. Other rocks 

 came from P'redericksvorn on the same coast." 



This is assuredly a very difficult journey to understand. If 

 the North Sea, as we are told, was tilled « itli ice, how could an 

 ice stream lorce its way from the comparatively low country round 

 the thrisliania Fiord right round the Nose of Norway, and then 

 acio.-.s the deep ocean ba-Mn to Britain ? Prof. Bonney has argued 

 that any ice sheet would be embayed in the great trough which 

 fkiris the coasts of Norway, ou' of which it could not rise again. 

 Apait Irom this, it must be remembered that if the elevation of 

 this ice sheet was so slight at the point when it started its 

 jouiney as to enable it to get a load of these Norwegian boulders 

 on Its back Irom the comparatively lowgrfuind where the mother 

 rock occurs in situ, it could not have the necessary slope to 

 move lieyond a very short distance. Pettersen has shown very 

 aduiirably that the glaciers from the high mountains of Northern 

 Norway, lar from traversing the North Sea, were not powerful 

 enough even to reach the string of islands which line the western 

 shores of Norway, a fortiori would this capacity be lacking in the 

 Case ol the ice fr^ -m Christiania Fiord. The existence of the ser- 

 rated and peaked Loloden islands in the route which a North .Sea 

 ice sheet must have traversed was long ago pointed out as a great 

 impedimeiu in the way of such a postulate. Again, il this 

 vast ice sheet came from any part of Norway, how did it get 

 the stones on to iis back? for in that case all Norway must 

 have been smothered with ice. Lastly, where is the terminal 

 moraine, or aii)tliiiig like a moraine, left by this monster? A 

 glacier is not like a river which deposits fewer and lewer stones 

 from us head waters as it Hows. On the contrary, a glacier 

 deposits Its greatest load at its furthest extremity. In the 

 case in question we have a few sporadic stones only, whose 

 otigiii may well have been such as that pointed out by Prof. 

 Hughes. It seems to some of us, and I have argued the 

 question in my "Glacial Nightmare," that the whole notion of a 

 North Sea ice sheet is a product of some other form of 

 rea^oni g than inductive science, and that we have no good 

 reason to di.ubt that when the mountains of Scotland and 

 Scandinavia were nursing large glaciers, the North Sea was 

 lite Irom ice, except perhaps some tloaiing bergs, and was the 

 home ol a rich niolluscan launa. Henkv H. HuWorth. 



Festoon Cumulus or "Pocky" Cloud. 



Tm-: kllowing observation of Dr. Clouston's "pocky" 

 clouu, which 1 had an opportunity of making a few days ago 

 duiiiig a sounding cruise on board II. M.S. jtactal, seerns to 

 thiow soiiie light on the conditions under which this somewhat 

 laie phenomenon occurs in these islands. 



At 9.30 a.m. on May 3, while sounding in lat. 59' 45' and 



NO. 1282, VOL. 50] 



long. 1° 20' W., wind west-south-west, force 3 to 5, verygus'y, 

 a heavy squall approached from windward and struck the ship; 

 wind in the squall about north, maximum force 8 to 9. .Similar 

 squalls came up at intervals during the day, the weather re- 

 maining almost unchanged except for a slight veeiing of the 

 wind in the afternoon and the appearance of a " mackerel sky " 

 of unusually fine texture. 



While sounding in lat. 59' 32' N., long. I" o' E., a squall 

 similar to the others approached from windward (west), and 

 reached the ship at 6.20 p.m. The wind again shifted some 

 points to the northward, with a smart shower of rain and sleet. 

 Ten minutes later the "pocky" cloud was observed, forming 

 the rear of the squall cloud. The number of festoons or mammae 

 was eight, with a possible ninth, of which two were incomplete, 

 looking as if the bottom had come out of the " poke." The 

 appearance fully maintained its reputation as a prognostic. The 

 wind shifted to north-west about 9 p.m., and at midnight it was 

 blowing a whole gale from that direction. 



Before the "pocky ' cloud was observed my attention was 

 specially drawn to the weather by the peculiar nature of the 

 sea disturbance. A moderate swell from windward appeared 

 to be complicated by a cross sea from about north-east, resulting 

 in a kind of miniature of the pyramidal seas met with in the 

 centre of tropical cyclones. When the gale broke out the sea 

 produced in this way tried the Jachal to an extent out of all 

 proportion to the violence of the wind. It would appear from the 

 " Daily Weather Reports" that at the time the " pocky "cloud 

 was seen the Jackal was slightly in advance and to the right of 

 the centre of a depression which had shjrtly before begun to 

 increase in depth. If the cloud was observed in a region where 

 an ascending current was increasing in velocity, its indications 

 are of obvious interest. In any case, Abercromby's statement 

 ("Weather," p. 79), that the storm the festoons prognosticate 

 belong to another cyclone following, requires modification. 



Oxford, May 10. . H. N. lUCKSON. 



Ouramoeba. 



This peculiar amccboid animal was first observed by the late 

 Dr. Jos. Leidy in 1S74. Though he recognised in it the essential 

 characters of the genus Anuxlia, the permanent filamentous ap- 

 pendages with which the posterior end of the boiiy is provided 

 led him to consider it a distinct genus. His description, em- 

 bodied in " Freshwater Rhizopods of North America," was 

 published by the United Slates Government in 1S79, a brief 

 notice of the form having appeared previously in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phihidclphia. 

 Dr. Leidy cites two or more notices of the same animal by Mr. 

 .Archer, of Dublin, who, however, held it to be a form of 

 Wallich's Aniivba villosa. 



In 1879 it was stated by Leidy to be rare, he having found it 

 only ill two I jcalities on a single stream in Pennsylvania ; but 

 Dr. Stokes, of Trenton, N.J., informs me that it is somewhat 

 common in that vicinity. 



My own observations, made in February and March of the 

 present year, upon the only specimens which I have met in this 

 locality, convince me that a suspicion which Dr. Leidy ex- 

 presses, but which he rejects, is, after all, well grounded, 

 namely, that the filaments, which constitute the only peculiarity 

 of ihe creature, are of the nature of a parasitic fungus growing 

 upon the genus Amalnt. 



The citation by any reader of Natuke of published observa- 

 tions upon this singular form since Leidy's monograph would 

 be prized by me. Wm. L. Poteat. 



Wake Forest College, N.C. 



says 

 This 



An Intelligence of the Frog. 



Dr. Romanes, in his " .Vnimal Intelligence," p. 254, 

 that, "frogs seem to have definite ideas of locality." 

 matter appears to have been noticed of old by the Japanese and 

 Chinese, inasmuch as we credit Ryoan Tcrashima's explanation 

 of the names given to the frog by the two nations. In his 

 " Illustrated Encyclopasdia of Three Systems of Japan and 

 China," completed in 1713 (new edition, I'okio, 1884, book liv. 

 p. 553), he remarks: — "When frogs are 'removed far' 

 iChinese, liia'', they always 'long' (.Chinese, ma) after the 

 original locality ; hence the Chinese name ' Hi.a-m.i.' For the 

 similar reason the Japanese call them ' K.aeru ' (meaning 

 ' return')." Shisei Tagawa (1707-76), one of the most erudite 

 lexicographers of Japan, holds to the same opinion in his " Dust 

 from a Sawyer's SVorkshop" (Tokio, 1891, p. 8). 



May 12. KuMAGUSi; MiNAKATJ. 



