IV THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK 91 



to be found in situ ; and he also noticed several deposits 

 of limestone gravel in places from 300 to 400 feet higher 

 than the beds of limestone rock which are from two to ten 

 miles off. Debris of red sandstone is also found much 

 higher than the parent rock. Boulders of Shap granite, 

 Mr. Kendal tells us, have passed over Stainmoor by tens 

 of thousands, and in doing so have been carried about 200 

 feet above their source ; and the curious Permian rock, 

 " Brockram," has been carried in the same direction no 

 less than 1,000 feet higher than its highest point of origin.^ 

 In Scandinavia there are still more striking examples, 

 erratic blocks having been found at an elevation of 4,500 

 feet, which could not possibly have come from any place 

 higher than 1,800 feet.^ We thus find clear and absolute 

 demonstration of glacier-ice moving up-hill and dragging 

 with it rocks from lower levels to elevations varying from 

 200 to 2,700 feet above their origin. 



These facts have seemed so incredible that many geolo- 

 gists think that they throw doubt on the whole theory of 

 a glacial epoch of the extent and nature of that indicated 

 by the phenomena here described ; while others, finding no 

 such upward motion in any of the existing Swiss glaciers, 

 deny that any glaciers, however large, can have produced 

 such effects. But recent researches in Greenland and 

 Spitzbergen have shown us exactly how such elevations of 

 rocks and moraine-matter do actually occur. Wherever 

 ridges or isolated rocks rise above the surface of the ice- 

 sheet across the direction of its motion, the rock-debris 

 that is embedded in its lower strata is gradually brought 

 up and deposited on the surface. (See Q. Journal Geolog. 

 Soc, Nov., 1899, p. 684, where Mr. E. J. Garwood describes 

 this phenomenon as observed by himself in Spitzbergen.) 



We see then that the ice-sheets of the British Isles, of 

 Scandinavia, and of North America exhibit the very same 

 characteristics as those of Switzerland, but on a larger 

 scale ; while they exhibit other phenomena which are now 

 only to be paralleled in the great ice-sheets under which 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen are now largely buried. We 



^ Wright's Man and the Glacial Period, p. 154. 

 ^ James Geikie's Great Ice Age, 2ucl ed., p. 404. 



