Correspondence — Dr. F. A. Bather. 283 



They are certainly not more technical, and I should have thought 

 even less technical, than the phrases ' facetted pebbles ' and ' tabular 

 outliers ' which he prefers. They don't mean the same thing, it is 

 true ; but supposing they did, the objection to them seems to me that 

 they are German and not English. In so far, I agree with your 

 reviewer rather than with Mr. Grabham. One should distinguish 

 very carefully between the using of foreign words out of laziness 

 or because one is ignorant of one's own language, and the use of 

 a correct technical term. A technical term, to be worthy of the 

 name, should be clearly defined, and should be capable of use in 

 all languages with equal convenience. For this reason it is generally 

 preferable to form technical terms out of Greek or Latin words. 



The word ' Dreikante ' is not a good technical term. It does not 

 mean a wind-worn pebble, but a tripyramidal or triquetral pebble, and 

 the wind- worn pebbles that have this shape are in a minority. In the 

 second place, being German and not English, it presents peculiar 

 difficulties. Mr. Grabham himself writes of ' a dreikanter ', when he 

 means a Dreikante (though it is not clear that he would exclude 

 Einkanter, Zweikanter, Vierkanter, u.s.w.), while the last gentleman 

 who wrote on them in your pages persistently spoke of ' Dreikante ' 

 when he meant 'Dreikanter'. German is an excellent language — 

 for Germans ; but when I am writing for Englishmen, I prefer to 

 write in English, rather than to risk errors in a foreign tongue. 



F. A. Bather. 



May 2, 1911. 



THE LAND-ICE QUESTION. 

 Sir, — Though I ought to leave Mr. Deeley to reply for himself, is 

 not the difficulty raised by the Rev. 0. Fisher in the Magazine for 

 May, p. 238, removed when we regard the so-called ground-moraine 

 of Boulder-clay as consisting originally of intraglacial material, moved 

 forward at various levels within and with the body of the ice? This 

 is the view forced upon one by the examination of Arctic glaciers, as 

 Garwood and Gregory and others have pointed out. Even in India, 

 as T. D. La Touche shows, some glaciers consist largely of stones. 

 A composite mass of this kind may do a large amount of damage to 

 its floor. The conception of the formation of Boulder-clay as an 

 independent entity under ice is probably not commonly held at the 

 present time by glacialists. Grenville A. J. Cole. 



Geological Survey of Ireland, Dublin. 

 May 10, 1911. 



OBITUARY. 



EDOUARD FRANCOIS DUPONT. 

 Born January 31, 1841. Died March 31, 1911. 



We regret to record the death at Cannes, at the age of 70, of E. Dupont, 

 the Honorary Director of the Boyal Museum of Natural History at 

 Brussels. The results of his early geological studies on the Carboni- 

 ferous Limestone of Belgium and on the fossil Cephalopods date from 

 1859, and he subsequently published observations on the Devonian. 



