222 Prof. Hughes, Criticism of the Geological [Oct. 30, 



invoke the aid of the many accidents of river ice and of ground 

 ice to help them if necessary on their way from the glacier foot 

 to the pack ice of the coast and further distribute and mix them 

 by the agency of sea-borne icebergs. 



It is not only in Arctic regions that coast ice of considerable 

 transporting power is formed. This year I saw in the Wash the 

 frozen snow lifted by the tide and, with whatever was tangled in 

 it, carried up and down with the ebb and flow. The sea for 

 several hundred yards from the shore was covered with pack ice 

 on which sometimes sat large sea birds. 



Some years ago I saw in the estuary of the Dee and along the 

 coast of North Wales, i.e. between latitude 53° and 54°, masses of 

 pack ice floating seaward which were more than twelve feet thick 

 and large enough to have carried several cottages. Large two- 

 masted vessels were frozen up in it. Boulders and earth were 

 transported by some of these ice-floes and were shifted up and 

 down with the tide along the shores of the estuary below Connah's 

 Quay. 



But many of the stones which lie on the shores of North 

 Wales are glacial boulders derived from the various drifts which 

 occur inland and in the cliffs along the coast — so that ice now 

 carries glaciated boulders along the coast of North Wales — the 

 glaciation having taken place long ago, the ti'ansport going on 

 still. 



Many other agents besides ice help to carry them. Down 

 the Clwyd, in flood, stumps of trees, with stones from the 

 glacial drifts firmly grasped among the roots, are continually 

 carried and are met with on the shore far from the mouth of any 

 river. Fragments thus dropped on the sand or mud, after lying 

 there long enough to allow the great bladder-like base and the 

 long flat leaves of the laminaria to grow, are further dragged by 

 them in storm, and, with their striae protected by each agent of 

 transport, flnd a resting place at last among the shells and other 

 remains of a temperate climate. All along that coast, far from 

 the mouths of the Clwyd or Dee, there are cliffs of boulder clay 

 of various age and origin and these are being perpetually under- 

 mined and the boulders, large and small, and the lumps of clay 

 are transported along the shore by the tide and wind waves. 

 Where masses of clay containing rock fragments are rolled along 

 the beach, the softened outside of the mass is covered with recent 

 shells and shingle which have stuck into it, whereas, on breaking 

 it open, we find the more solid clay with fragments, sometimes 

 striated, which have never seen the light since they were buried 

 in the boulder drift. 



It is not uncommon to find even single scratched stones de- 

 tached from their parent cliff and carried a considerable distance 



