458 Sir II H. Howorth— 



moving, if it moved like any ice known to us along definite lines 

 of least resistance, must, when it reached England, have taken to 

 sportively moving in all directions at once, not onty towards its 

 outward circumference sporadically, but also from its circumference 

 inwards, in order to move the Oolitic and Lias fragments of Rutland, 

 Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire, to the heights near South- 

 wold, in Suffolk, the Red Chalk, carstone, and the limestones 

 of Lincolnshire, far to the south of Cambridge, and the chalky 

 fragments of the chalk exposures far to the west into middle 

 England; and must have been capable of doing all these things at 

 the same time, drawing in its scattered tribute to a common cauldron, 

 and then distributing it, when mixed, as we see it distributed from 

 Essex to Warwickshire. Have the fantastic attributes of man ever 

 conceived a more preposterous mechanical process, and has science 

 ever been burdened with such absurdities before? 



Assuredly these facts make it impossible for those whose science 

 is inductive to explain the mixing of the clays and their subsequent 

 distribution by means of a foreign ice-sheet; and by foreign I mean 

 here an ice-sheet, whencesoever derived, which has invaded Eastern 

 England from the outside. 



If we discard a foreign ice-sheet as the explanation of the Chalky 

 Clay, shall we be any better off in making an appeal to a local 

 glacier, or a series of loeal glaciers, as Searles Wood and others 

 have done? In the first place, it must be remembered that such 

 a local glacier does not in any way explain the crux of the position, 

 namely, the presence of the foreign stones. Not only so, but if 

 the area occupied by the Chalky Clay were occupied by local glaciers, 

 how could it possibly be invaded by the foreigners at all ? The 

 presence of the local ice-sheet would form as complete a barrier 

 to the introduction of foreign stones as a stone wall to the passage 

 of the wind. This difficulty seems to have been entirely over- 

 looked. 



Let us pass on, however. The next difficulty is to understand 

 how such a local ice-sheet or local glacier could be formed at all in 

 the area in question when there are no mountains, and onty low 

 rolling downs. Glaciers, as we know them, gather on high 

 ground, and descend into the valleys. If it were a local glacier 

 which occupied the wolds of Lincolnshire, and thence distributed 

 the products of its denuding agency, how comes it, again, that the 

 debris of these chalk hills should be so different on the east side 

 of them to what it is on the west? and how are we to account for 

 the absence of chalk fragments in the beds to the east of these 

 ridges ? but apart from this, how are we to postulate glaciers as 

 existing on lands so slightly elevated as are these wolds ? Where 

 is the gathering-ground for such glaciers to be found here ? The 

 same argument applies to the wolds of Norfolk or Yorkshire. If 

 they were covered with local glaciers, how comes it that this 

 ice shed such very different materials from their eastern and 

 western flanks respectively ? But suppose we got our local glaciers, 

 each one crowning a different set of wolds, and moving outwards, 



