418 Dr. Nils Olof Hoist — The Ice Age in England. 



In conclusion, I would remark that the moat valuable addition to 

 our knowledge of the geology of the Carlisle Basin made since 1881 

 is that of Mr. Lamplugh. I refer to his statement at the meeting of 

 the Geological Society on April 29, 1914 — which I have already 

 mentioned — that deep borings in the north of the Isle of Man showed 

 the existence there of 700 or 800 feet of Gypseous Shales resting 

 upon St. Bees Sandstone. These deep borings very decidedly suggest 

 the prolongation of the Carlisle Basin to the north of the Isle of Man . 

 And they also tend to remove any scepticism as to the possibility of 

 the existence of Gypseous Shales above the St. Bees Sandstone in 

 Cumberland as well as below it. 



VI. — The Ice Age in England. 

 By Dr. Nils Olof Holst (late of the Geological Survey of Sweden). 



ENGLAND has only had one Glacial Period. G. W, Lamplugh 

 pointed this out in 1906 before the British Association at York, and 

 quite lately also in 1913 before the International Geological Congress 

 in Canada. 1 No one has yet attempted to contradict it. 



It is true that more than ten years ago, in the third edition of 

 The Great Ice Age? James Geikie put forward his theory that 

 there were no fewer than six different glacial epochs. But of these 

 the two last are only post-glacial climatic changes of minor im- 

 portance, and may therefore be left out of consideration here. The 

 remaining four have all, significantly enough, received foreign names : 

 Scanian, Saxonian, Polandian, and Mecklenburgian, and are based 

 very little on British but mainly on Swedish and German observations. 

 None the less, they are »of so much importance to the geology of 

 Britain that a brief examination of them may not be out of place here. 



As regards the oldest of these, derived from Scania, the southern- 

 most part of Sweden, it may be said without the least hesitation that 

 it depends on a complete misapprehension. 



As is quite natural, when the Scandinavian inland ice first began 

 to move to the south it advanced with considerably greater rapidity 

 over the level Baltic Basin than it did over the mountainous highlands 

 of Sweden. By the former road, therefore, it arrived more quickly 

 in Southern Sweden, and here, still following the line of the Baltic 

 Basin, there arose a direction of striae markedly at variance with that 

 which characterizes the main track of the inland ice during its 

 principal phase. It is just on this fact that the Scanian glacial epoch 

 was based. Meanwhile it has been shown that during its last stage 

 no less than during its first the inland ice moved more readily in the 

 Baltic Basin, and that consequently it continued to move there longer 

 than on the mainland, maintaining the same divergence in the 

 direction of its striae as during the first stage, and finally that the last 

 stage was in full continuity with the main phase. 3 The grounds for 

 a Scanian epoch have thus been entirely cut away. 



1 G. W. Lamplugh, 1914. " The Interglacial Problem in the British 

 Islands " : C.B. Congr. Geol. Internat. Canada, 1913, pp. 427-34. 



2 London, 1894, pp. 608-12. Cf. Journ. Geol. Chicago, vol. 3, pp. 246-52. 



3 J. C. Moberg & N. O. Hoist, 1899. De sydskanska rullstensasames vitt- 

 nesbord ifragan om istidens kontimtitet. Lund. 



