110 MORAINES. 



tlie enormous power of glacial action ! They 

 appear to melt and crumble into clust and mud, 

 like mole-liills, in the gigantic grasp of the 

 "ice-rivers ! " 



I once rented the shootings of Glen-Turritt, 

 in Perthshire, and in that valley I well 

 remember some vast accumulations of earth 

 and gravel, the origin of which completely 

 puzzled me at the time ; but after having seen 

 the numerous glaciers of Spitzbergen, I have 

 no longer any doubt or hesitation in believing 

 that the mounds are the lateral and terminal 

 moraines of ancient glaciers, which filled the 

 glen in times when the climate and appear- 

 ance of Scotland must have been very 

 analogous to that of Spitzbergen at the 

 present day; when perhaps the seal and the 

 walrus sunned themselves (fearless of har- 

 poons and conical bullets) on fields of ice, 

 drifting about amongst a "wintry archipe- 

 las^o" of barren islands, and hunted their 

 prey on submarine banks, now fertile land, 

 and rented at 5^, an acre. The shells, those 

 insignificant but yet most powerful exponents 

 of the past, show that this is more than mere 

 hypothesis, for most of the shells now in- 

 habiting the Arctic seas, although no longer 



