Eenew8—Sir H. H. Hoicorth—Ice or Water. 279 



' Apple-pip.' This may serve as an example. Stones in boulder- 

 clays are frequently striated, and most geologists now accept those 

 marks as indicating the action of ice. This interpretation he disputes, 

 proposing, as we think, improbable alternatives. Excellent authorities 

 declare that striation may be produced by the friction of stones one 

 against another when embedded in a rock-mass ; they may be of the 

 nature of slickensides. That is undoubtedly true, but stones thus 

 marked are not common, and only occur under special circumstances. 

 He tells us they may be scratched accidentally by the passage of 

 a plough or harrow, and, as he might have said, by boys using them 

 as substitutes for a toboggan ; these, again, are local in occurrence 

 and can usually be distinguished. They may be scratched by 

 mutual friction when swept along by a rapid stream. That also is 

 true, but anyone who has examined the pebbles in a torrent bed or 

 on the sea-shore knows that such markings are few and far between. 

 Sir H. Howorth practically ignores two other facts : the abundance 

 of these striated pebbles in many British boulder-clays, and their 

 occurrence in the till of the Swiss lowland, from which we can 

 track them up to the existing glaciers, while he lays stress upon 

 the fact that they are rare in moraines connected with such 

 glaciers. Naturally they are, because at the present day most of the 

 morainic material has travelled on, not under, the ice, but they may 

 be found if we hunt for them in the right place. 



His method of citing authorities is also, we think, distinctly 

 forensic. Science is progressive, so that, though the facts recouded 

 by a careful observer may hold good for all time, his interpretation 

 of them may prove to be erroneous. But if one of " his masters," 

 say Murchison, whom he seems to hold in special veneration, has 

 referred some phenomenon to diluvial or other form of catastrophic 

 action, he is perfectly content ; forgetting that the efforts of ice 

 were practically unrecognised in Britain sixty years ago. The same 

 uncritical use of quotations has led him to give renewed currency to 

 Buckland's mistaken reference of the quartzite pebbles, so abundant 

 in the Bunter beds of the Midlands, to the Lickey Hills. But 

 adverse authorities meet with much less reverential treatment. If 

 Colonel Feilden states that a stone in an Arctic deposit is ice- 

 scratched, that is followed by " (say scratched, H. H. H.)." 

 Considering that the former's experience in the field has been so 

 much the greater, to treat his writing as a schoolmaster does a boy's 

 exercise is a rather strong measure. 



But though the author too often reminds us of a skilled cross- 

 examining counsel, we gladly admit that some of the extremists in 

 glacial matters leave the witness-box in a very damaged condition. 

 He has a most uncomfortable habit of taking up a bunch of puppet 

 hypotheses and, as it were, knocking their heads together. But he 

 succeeds better as a destroyer than a constructor. He takes away 

 an ice-sheet to put a deluge in its place. But we are entitled to ask 

 for some proof that the substitute could produce such deposits as the 

 drifts of the Norfolk coast or transport such boulders as it contains. 

 For a deluge to lay down a rather large group of stratified sands 



