538 Sir II. II. Iloworth— 



In a very great number of cases where they have been mapped is 

 glacial sands by the Geological Surveyors, I believe it has been 

 through a mistaken notion that. Crag sands or Bagsbot sands must 

 necessarily contain Crag or Bagshot shells, whereas a very large 

 portion of those sands is barren, and they only become fossiliferous 

 in places. In the Memoirs of the Survey for East Anglia, there are 

 continual laments about the difficulty of separating the so-called 

 Middle Sands or glacial sands from the sand beds of the Norwich 

 Crag. Mr. H. B. Woodward, for instance, says in his memoir on 

 the country round Norwich, in many places there is considerable 

 difficulty in drawing a definite line between the glacial sands and 

 the Norwich Crag where they do not contain foreign stones (op. cit., 

 p. 104). The explanation of the difficulty seems simple enough. 

 There is no difference, except of arrangement, between these sands. 

 The same sands, when they occur in horizontal or undisturbed beds, 

 are rightly treated as Tertiary sands ; when they have become con- 

 torted and dislocated, or mixed with foreign stones, they are classed 

 as glacial sands, the fact being that they are then merely Tertiary 

 sands remanies. The so-called contorted drift is probably nothing- 

 more than a series of alternating Crag sands and laminated clays 

 which have been twisted and contorted and subjected to violent 

 alteration, and in some cases mixed with some erratic boulders. 

 This mixing and tossing about constitute the sole testimony 

 they offer to their not being true and normal beds of Crag, etc. 

 The so-called Middle Sands or glacial sands of Eastern England 

 have their equivalents on the other side of the North Sea, 1 

 where they are developed on a great scale, and may be studied in 

 a much more effective and simple way, since they are not associated 

 there with the clays which form such a prominent feature of our 

 own surface beds. In Holland, from Brabant to the Helder, the 

 surface beds which are classed as glacial, lie immediately on Crag 

 beds, which are there developed on a great scale, while there are no 

 beds of Secondary clay or chalk exposed which could supply the 

 ingredients for making boulder-clays like our Chalky Clay, etc. 

 These so-called glacial beds in Holland, therefore, consist merely 

 of sands and pebbly gravels corresponding to the Middle Sands 

 which we have been discussing, and consist there, as they do here, 

 of rearranged Crag beds, with a certain mixture of erratic boulders, 

 and nothing more. The matrix of the beds is of home origin, and 

 simply testifies to the Crag sands and gravels having been taken up 

 by some mighty engine, which has rearranged and tossed them 

 about, just as our Secondary and Tertiary clays and sands have been 

 taken up and similarly rearranged. Nor is there a tittle of evidence 

 in these Dutch beds, other than the supposed ice-borne character of 

 the erratics contained in them, to suggest ice-portage or an Ice Age. 



To return to England — what the instrument was which tossed the 

 sands and gravels about, formed the contorted drift, and generally 

 rearranged them in this fashion, I hope to discuss on another 



1 My friend Mr. Harmer's pnper on the Dutch surface beds had not been 

 published when I wrote this, or I should have referred to it. 



