590 KEPORT — 1889. 



IV. While the phenomena of the drift are proverbially ubiquitous in those 

 latitudes where they occur, and the evidence they furnish in the shape of boulders, 

 smoothed rocks, and beds of unstratilied materials is virtually indestructible, we 

 may search all the older rocks in vain for corresponding evidence, and, except a 

 few sporadic and most uncertain boulders found by Eamsay and Godwin Austen 

 in the Permian beds, and some similar and very local traces in the Miocene beds, 

 there is no evidence, either in the succession of life or in the lithology of the strata, 

 to iustify the theory. In regard to the succession of life Lyell wrote very emphati- 

 cally that it afforded no evidence of interglacial periods. 



V. The evidence of interglacial periods chiefly relied upon by believers in 

 them is derived from the glacial beds themselves, the most difficult and hetero- 

 geneous in structure of all geological horizons, where traces of violent action 

 abound, and where it seems impossible to find a key which shall explain the true 

 succession even for two adjoining counties, much less for two large geogi-aphical 

 areas, and the phenomena generally quoted can be better explained by other causes. 



The evidence of tlie fauna and flora in the quaternary beds is also completely at 

 issue with such a theory. Instead of alternating climates, nothing is more plainly 

 proved than that the hysenafed upon, and was therefore contemporaneous with, tie 

 reindeer in the same area : while the leaves of the grey willow are found mixed with 

 those of the Canary laurel and the fig — pointing, not to a succession of alternate 

 warm and cold climates, but to neutral conditions, where the life characteristic of 

 different climates might live together. 



VI. Such ice sheets as are required by the current theory to explain the exis- 

 tence of Scandinavian erratics in Southern Poland and Central Russia would cover 

 the mountain tops in Norway, and cover therefore the very source of erratics. 



VII. The movemeat of ice sheets over hundreds of miles of level plains without 

 any vis a tergo has never been shown to be even possible and, so far as we can see, 

 is inconsistent with the phj^sical qualities of ice as now known. 



For these, among other reasons, the author contended that the theory of ice 

 sheets and of interglacial periods cannot be maintained ; and although it is quite 

 true that the facts require us to supplement the former existence of great glaciers 

 by the operation of some other force if we are to explain the occurrence of drift, 

 in many cases overlying old river channels and mammoth beds, and the existence of 

 drift far beyond the reach of any possible glaciers, it is inconsequent and un- 

 scientific to appeal to a cause which is inconsistent with empirical tests and involves 

 an appeal to forces unknown in Nature. 



6. Note on a New Localiti/ for the Arctic Shell-heds of the Basement Boulder 

 Glmj on the Yorkshire Coast. By Gr. W. Lamplugh. 



The basement boulder clay at the ' South Sea Landing ' on Flamborough Head 

 includes many irregular masses of fine gravel, silt, and sand, and one of these, a 

 thin lenticular streak of greenish-yellow sand, contains many shells, thougb the 

 neio-hbouring inclusions are unfossiliferous. 



The matrix of these shells resembles some of the sandy patches which have 

 yielded the Arctic fauna at Bridlington and at Dunlington. The shells obtained 

 are also of the same species ; so that there is every reason for believing that the bed 

 is another fragment of the same sea-bottom, transported by ice, as in the previously 

 known examples. 



The species identified are as follows : — 



Turritella erosa, Conth. | Astarte sulcata var. eJliptica, Da. Cos. 



Natica affinis, Gmel. 



Admete virldula, Fabr. 



Bentaliicm entah's, L. 



Poeteii iglandicus, Miill. 



Leda (limahda?). Say. 



Cy2>rina islandica, L. 



The seam containing the shells is only about 24 feet long, and is nowhere more 



horealis and vars. Ch. 



„ compressa and vars. Mont. 

 Mya truncata, L. 



„ „ var. Uddevallensig. 



Saxicara rugosa, L. 

 Balamis, Sp. 



