GI.. I ( ■/. //, Gh:OLOG ) • OF NORTH GREENLAND 775 



fectly known to make it certain that both these materials 

 may not be indigenous. It, of course, remains that the glacia- 

 tion of Newfoundland may be local, without denying the possi- 

 bility of the extension of ice from the mainland across even so 

 narrow, though moderately deep, body of water as separates the 

 island from the mainland. 



Although affording no specific warrant for speculation con- 

 cerning phenomena on the other side of the Atlantic, the phe- 

 nomena about Greenland raise the inquiry whether continuity of 

 glaciation from Scandinavia to the British Isles was really a fact. 

 I am not familiar with the details of the evidence on which the 

 current belief rests, but it seems to me difficult to believe that snow 

 and ice could accumulate on so narrow a strip of land as Scandi- 

 navia in sufficient quantity to allow it to cross the North Sea to 

 the British Isles, if relative elevations remained as they now are. 

 If the water separation was much narrower and shallower than 

 now (a result which an elevation of a few hundred feet would 

 bring about) some of the difficulties would be obviated ; but 

 Geikie^ finds reason for believing that the British Isles were, in 

 general, lower than now during epochs of glaciation. Existing 

 evidence on this point would be likely to pertain to the closing, 

 rather than to the opening stages of an ice epoch. If the North 

 Sea basin were overspread by a thick sheet of ice, the coverino- 

 being accomplished when the land and the sea bottom were 

 higher, a submergence considerably below the present level 

 might be necessary to sever the continental from the island part 

 of the ice-sheet. 



Is it not true that something more than the presence of Scan- 

 dinaxian bowlders in Great Britain is necessary to prove con- 

 tinuous glaciation between these two lands? Submero-ence, with 

 floating ice, might land such bowlders in Great Britain and Ire- 

 land, and they might subsequently be incorporated into till by 

 indigenous glaciation. If there be shells in the till of Scotland 

 whicli came from the bottom of the North Sea, they would seem 

 to be good evidence of continuous glaciation across this sea 



' Great Ice Age, 3d edition. 



