Rev. E. Hill — The East Anglian Boulder-clay. 555 



VL — Observations on East Anglian Boulder-clay. 



By the Eev. E. Hill, F.G.S.i 



I DESCRIBE some facts which have attracted ray attention in my 

 neighbourhood as bearing on the question of the East Anglian 

 Boulder-clays, and I note the directions in which these facts would 

 seem to lead our ideas. For the most jDart I limit myself to my 

 own observations. 



The soil of my neighbourhood is extremely heavy. Boulder-clay 

 is the subsoil, and is often turned up by the plough. The great 

 lumps and clods are dried by the sun into masses almost as hard as 

 brick. But these iron clods, penetrated by the frosts of the severe 

 winters we have lately had, become such that, after the frost has 

 passed away, at the tap of a stick they crumble into a fine powder 

 and almost into dust. If such be the effect of present winters, 

 ■what may not have been within the power of winters in the great 

 Ice Age. It should be noted also that the matrix of the East 

 Anglian Boulder-clay seems chiefly Kimmeridge clay, while that 

 of the Midlands is, I believe, chiefly Keuper and Lias. These are 

 clays which frost would pulverize, and which occur in the respective 

 regions. There is, then, no need to call in a glacier grinding-mill to 

 make a matrix for the Boulder-clay. These observations seem to 

 point to the land-ice theory being unnecessary. 



In the matrix of clay, besides flints, there lie pieces of chalk of 

 every size, from boulders measured by yards down to the pea and 

 the pin's head. I find it difficult to understand how a glacier could 

 grind chalk to anything other than powder. But frost makes the 

 face of a clunch wall or chalk quarry scale off, and showers down 

 pieces of every size. The number of these pieces in the clay is 

 great. I have tried to count the number in a definite area. 

 Counting only pieces of pea size and upwards, I have twice found 

 as many as ninety to the square foot. How come these to be so 

 intimately mingled with the clay-matrix. 



Again, how are the clay and chalk brought together at all ? The 

 Kimmeridge clay all lies far to the west of Suffolk ; I know of none 

 nearer than Ely. On the other hand, chalk occurs as a constituent 

 of Boulder-clays in the Midlands far to the west of all Cretaceous 

 beds. Chalk, then, has been carried westwards, and clay in the 

 opposite direction. What was the agent which could carry east 

 and west at once? Certainly not those glaciers whose course can 

 be mapped by their contents. These observations seem to indicate 

 that the land-ice theory is impossible. 



In digging wells many blocks of chalk and limestone brought up 

 are found to be striated or scratched. One such (which was shown), 

 from a well at Felsham, is scratched on one side only ; the other 

 side is a mass of fossils, unscratched. It may be a split portion of 

 a larger block, or it may have had one side protected by ice. But 

 in any case clearly it was scratched first and placed in the clay 



^ A paper read at the Ipswich Meeting of the British Association. 



