1893.] evidence for the Recurrence of Ice Ages. 117 



the north side of the Howgill Fells near Tebay and Shap, there 

 seems to be a clear passage up from the coarse red conglomerate 

 into finer conglomerates, sandstones, shales, and limestones. The 

 shales and sandstones contain remains of plants and marine shells. 

 On the whole therefore it seems most probable that as the land 

 went down in the early Carboniferous period, the sea kept planing 

 off everything up to the Lake Mountains. Perhaps there was 

 then a more rapid subsidence ; at any rate the sea crept up the 

 hills, and found in the recesses great masses of debris, the result 

 of subaerial waste. Some of these got covered up and are still 

 preserved ; others were washed out and resorted over previous 

 marine deposits, or on the bare sea bottom, and from these 

 resorted beds there would be a passage up through lower Lime- 

 stone shale to higher Carboniferous beds. 



" This view will quite explain why we seem to have a passage 

 in one place, and in another a sharp line between the Old Red 

 Conglomerate and Carboniferous rocks. 



" It would appear probable from the number and character of 

 the corals and the plants imbedded in the earliest deposits of the 

 period, that the climate was temperate or subtropical." 



Some pebbles from this conglomerate have the less soluble 

 portions projecting beyond the general level of the surface of the 

 stone, as for instance on the boulder derived from the Bala Lime- 

 stone, No. 76, on which the coral Halysites catenularius stands 

 out in clear relief, showing all the details of its structure. In 

 this case it is clear that the specimen has been subjected to 

 ordinary weathering not to glaciation. 



XV. Striated Boulders in Cambrian Conglomei'ate. 



Reusch described and exhibited to the International Geological 

 Congress of Washington some specimens of striated rock from 

 the Cambrian conglomerate of Norway. Admitting for the sake 

 of argument that these are of glacial origin they are of great 

 interest as proving the occurrence of glacial conditions locally 

 in those early ages, and as so far combatting the idea of there 

 having been a perceptibly higher temperature at the period 

 of the deposition of our earliest fossiliferous rocks. But the 

 moderate uniformitarian would expect to find such traces there if 

 anywhere; at the base of a system (see above, p. 109 and footnote); 

 after one of the greatest earth movements of which we have any 

 record ; in a latitude where glaciers now exist in Europe and 

 where far more severe conditions still prevail on the other side 

 of the Atlantic. It proves nothing in regard to periods of general 

 lowering of temperature, and lends no support to any theory of 

 circumpolar ice caps. 



