366 Sir H. H. Howortli — Geological History of the Baltic, 



physics, and warned them over and over again of the blind alley they 

 were following. They were faithfully copied for a long time by the 

 geologists of Germany, who dealt similarly with their domestic problem 

 of explaining the shattered chalk of their own country. Among them, 

 the most notable champions of ice were Wahnschaffe and Scholz, 

 and more lately Philippi. The first notable geologist in Germany 

 to make an effective revolt against the once current explanation of 

 these Cretaceous masses and their movements was Yon Koenen, who' 

 attributed the gigantic dislocations and movements involved to 

 tectonic earth movements on a great scale. He was presently 

 supported by Berendt, Hermann Credner, Cohen, Deecke, E. Credner, 

 and lastly by 0. Jaekel and K. Keilhack. They were also at one 

 in regai-d to the date of the dislocations and the accompanying 

 phenomena, which they attributed to post-Tertiary times. 



These German explorers, especially the later ones, have sifted the 

 evidence with skill and pains, and have tested some of the initial 

 difficulties with the boring rod. They are agreed that the phenomena 

 are not explainable by the action of ice, a view in which my friends 

 Professor Bonney and the Rev. E. Hill completely concur. After 

 paying two visits to Rugen they affirm that no evidence can be found 

 there to support the ice theory. " We shall be ready," they say, "to 

 admit the potency of ice-sheets as excavators, and benders or breakers 

 of rock masses when any evidence worthy of the name can be pro- 

 duced in proof that they operate in these ways ; but though we have 

 diligently sought for it in the field we can only find it asserted on 

 paper" (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Ivii, pp. 16, 17). This is precisely 

 the conclusion I have maintained in regard to the English beds for 

 many years. 



Lyell and Credner both agree that the drift beds which lie 

 conformably to the Chalk in the Baltic lands and follow its 

 convolutions and lines of fracture were deposited before the great 

 disturbance took place, and Lyell distinctly describes it as post- 

 Glacial, that is, as I prefer to say, posterior to the deposition 

 of the drift, and it is a notable fact that that great master, 

 who saw a good deal further than some of his professed disciples, 

 should have so emphatically adhered to the view which seems the 

 only view consistent with the doctrine of uniformity that periods of 

 great disturbance in the earth's crust were not confined to older 

 geological periods, but have occurred as lute as Pleistocene times. 

 Those who were reproved by Lyell so forcibly seem to forget that it 

 is in the very earliest geological periods that we have the fewest 

 evidences of contemporary dislocations on a great scale, and also the 

 largest extent of still undistui'bed strata, while all the greatest 

 dislocations known to us took place in later periods, notably in 

 Tertiary times, as the Alps, which have been lifted up 21,000 feet 

 since Eocene days, and the western Himalayas quite as high since 

 Pliocene times, bear witness.. Is there any reason under heaven why 

 the process should have stopped in Tertiary times? How can anj'oue 

 who believes in rational uniformity maintain such a theory ? 



Have not (as the Scandinavian geologists I have quoted have 

 shown) the two gigantic peninsulas of Greenland and Scandinavia 



