536 Sir H. H. Ho north — 



ultra-Glacialists, but, if water arranged and deposited the Bands, 

 whence did it derive them ? If it washed them out of the hetero- 

 geneous "muck" which formed the moraine, then the claws, no 

 less than the sands, must have been in suspension in the water, and 

 been deposited by it, and if deposited slowly they ought to show, 

 which they do not, lines of continuous stratification. If they came 

 from some other source than this, whence could they have come 

 when the country was, according to hypothesis, either blanketed 

 by ice or covered with the moraine stuff of the glaciers or ice-sheets. 

 The dilemma seems complete. I have put it before, in my " Glacial 

 Nightmare." Of course, I have received no auswer. The creed 

 of the Glacialists could not live an hour if its advocates did not 

 persistently hide their heads in the sand, like ostriches, to avoid 

 the most commonplace and every-day evidence. But let that pass. 



To a large number of geologists, these so-called Middle or Glacial 

 Sands of Eastern England still index a supposed Interglacial, mild 

 period. It was, in fact, upon the evidence of these very sands that 

 Searles Wood first based his postulate of mild periods in Glacial times. 

 It was supposed to be evidenced by the presence of marine shells 

 in these sands, which could not have lived when the North Sea 

 was choked with its portentous ice burden ; and Searles Wood's 

 conclusion is still quoted in some quarters. But the whole induc- 

 tion was really based on a complete mistake of observation. The 

 shells contained in these sands did not live contemporaneously with 

 the deposit of the sands at all. My friend Mr. Horace B. Woodward 

 has shown very conclusively that all the shells and fragments .of 

 shells found in the so-called Middle Sands of East Anglia are deri- 

 vative, and all of those which were formerly supposed to especially 

 distinguish a mild, Interglacial age are really Crag shells, and 

 derived from rearranged Crag beds. This view is now shared by 

 Mr. Clement Beid, who formerly opposed it. 



I would carry Mr. Horace Woodward's induction much further. 

 It seems to me that, so far as we have evidence, it extends to making, 

 not only the East Anglian, but all the shelly deposits of Eastern 

 England, which have been treated as original deposits of the Glacial 

 Age, derivative. 



I cannot see how it is possible to separate the isolated shelly beds 

 at March, in Cambridgeshire, from the shell beds of East Anglia, 

 with which they agree so much in texture and contents; while, if we 

 turn to the Yorkshire beds the evidence of their derivative and 

 pre-Glacial character is very marked. These shells occur in the 

 so-called Basement Clay at Bridlington, very often with their valves 

 united, in " transported masses of olive-grey sand and clay." 

 Other similar shells occur at Dimlington in pockets of transported 

 sand which still preserve their lamination, as was observed long 

 ago by Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Hughes, and brokeu 

 shells also occur there in the clay. Mr. Clement Beid and 

 Mr. Lamplugh have shown that these shells occur, not in situ, but 

 as transported boulders. 



The beds in question were formerly boldly called Crag, a name 



