Correspondence — Sir H. S. Eoworth. 47 



critical problems which have to be met at every turn. To those whose 

 geological and mechanical reasoning follows the same groove as my 

 own, it seems impossible, as it seemed impossible on the same grounds 

 to Pettersen,^ to Bonney, to Matthieu Williams, and to Milne-*Holme, 

 whose experience of glacial phenomena, combined with a knowledo-e 

 of Western Norway and Eastern Britain, entitle them, I think, 

 notwithstanding Mr. Barker's sneer, to the very first rank as 

 authorities on the geological side of this particular issue. 



1 have argued the case out in detail in my book on the " Glacial 

 Nightmare," at which I sincerely wish Mr. Deeley would look 

 before advancing arguments which have all been answered by 

 anticipation. *^ 



Mr. Deeley's reference to the Antarctic ice, which also occupies 

 a considerable space in my book, seems to me entirely beside the 

 question. The Antarctic ice, in so far as we have evidence, is planted 

 on a high plateau of land. When it reaches the sea it does not 

 march on as the Norwegian ice-sheet is supposed to have marched 

 on, athwart the deep Norwegian channel, and then across the North 

 Sea to the 100 fathom line, and there expose a great cliff, but it 

 breaks off into icebergs in shallow water, and these icebergs float 

 away. All this is perfectly rational. How it in any way supports 

 the North Sea monster I know not. In the one case the ice 

 behaves like other ice ; in the other case it would behave, it seems 

 to me, as no ice ever behaved before or since, except in a geoloo-ical 

 nightmare. ^ 



I will now turn to Mr. Harker. Although he affects to despise 

 the virtue^ of modesty, he says " he has not written a word on the 

 Scandinavian ice-sheet, and has kept his views on that subject 

 modestly to^ himself." Is this so? In the Transactions of the 

 Yorkshire Geological Society, where he discussed the question of 

 these boulders at length, he distinctly refers them to Scandinavia, 

 and actually says, " the movements of the ice, and the consequent 

 directions of transport, render this conclusion probable." I think, 

 after this, he ought to have called the boulders not " damao-ine- '' 

 but " damaged." ^ ^ 



If Mr. Harker no longer believes that ice brought the boulders 

 from Scandinavia, then cadet qucestio. To disprove that hypothesis 

 was the purpose of my writing. To be coy in making a confession 

 on such a point after what he has written is to borrow a weapon 

 from another sex than ours. We are not striving for some rhetorical 

 advantage, but for the truth, and the truth is not served by carefully 

 putting under a bushel the light that we may possess, and takino- 

 refuge in struthious logic. The question between us is, how are we 

 to account for the Laurvig boulders ? I suggested as a possibility 

 that they may have been partially ballast, and partially stones used 

 as anchors, net-weights, etc. 



Nothing that Mr. Harker has yet said seems, to me, to have 

 reduced the probability of that suggestion, and it is only a suggestion 

 He asks me whether the Vikings "ballasted their ships with little 

 pieces of rhombenporphyr, and used small pebbles of laurvikite for 



