Glacial Gravels, etc., of Eastern England. 541 



Glacial Age. With the contour of the country as we know it there 

 are no rivers in Eastern England which either make or can make 

 gravel or shingle, nor do we see whence the original stones could 

 have been derived under present conditions for fashioning the 

 pebbles. These pebbles are precisely like in form and in character 

 to the pebbles occurring in the Bagshot and Reading beds. Where 

 they occur in East Anglia, etc., in regular beds and undisturbed 

 layers, as they do at South wold and in other places, it seems to 

 me that they actually represent Tertiary horizons. Where they 

 occur mixed with foreign stones and disturbed, they form another 

 instance to be added to those already quoted of Tertiary beds which 

 have been remanie and redistributed by the same force and at the 

 same time as the various Boulder-clays were distributed. Let us 

 now sum up some conclusions — 



1. A general and most important result from these arguments 

 and facts, if they are sound, is, that whatever it was that mixed and 

 distributed the soft surface beds of Eastern England, the Boulder- 

 clays, so-called Middle Sands, and the gravels, it had no part in 

 manufacturing the ingredients out of which those beds were fashioned. 

 These ingredients, in so far as they were local, were already 

 fashioned and ready to its hands. The clays were already there in 

 the form of clay ; the chalky, Oolitic, and Liassic rubble was there 

 in the form of rubble; the polished flint and quartzite pebbles were 

 there in the form and shape we now find them ; and the shells were 

 also there, having lived in the Crag seas. 



2. What the instrument alone did which formed these beds as we 

 know them, was to bring with it a certain number of foreign stones 

 and to mix them with the ingredients already on the ground, and 

 then to distribute the product as we find it distributed. 



3. There is no evidence in these beds to justify our postulating 

 a long process and a prolonged period as necessary for this work, 

 such as the fashionable school of geologists postulate, who profess 

 to account, not only for this mixture and distribution, but for the 

 manufacture of the ingredients, by invoking the long-continued 

 action of ice during an Ice Age. On the contrary, there is every 

 ground for believing the process to have been rapid, and, if not 

 sudden, to have been continuous and not intermittent. 



4. There is no ground, so far as these beds or their contents are 

 concerned, for invoking the intervention of ice in any form in their 

 mixture and distribution, but every feature which marks them is at 

 issue with their having been the handiwork of ice. The term 

 glacial, therefore, applied to the clays, sands, and gravels in 

 question, is inapplicable. It is quite time that the authors of this 

 literature should put on their armour and sharpen their weapons, 

 and instead of repeating the obiter dicta of their wildest prophets, 

 should condescend to examine the facts and arguments which have 

 been quoted against them and to reply to their critics. 



