690 ERNEST H. L. SCHWARZ 



Permian or Carbo-Permian, and the so-called Cambrian one, which 

 is, at any rate, older than the Ordovician, and possibly Algonkian.^ 

 We have three in South Africa, the oldest of which may be equiva- 

 lent to the older of the two Austrahan ones. The great importance 

 of our two older bowlder clays is that they are not mere chance 

 moraines that have somehow become preserved, and which might 

 have formed on lofty mountain ranges, as moraines now form under 

 the Equator in South America, and therefore are no indication 

 whatever of changes of climate or of the sun's heat. Both our 

 Table Mountain and Griquatown glacial beds occur interstratified 

 with undoubted subaqueous deposits, and themselves show evidence 

 of subaqueous^ origin. The prevalence of glaciers down to the 

 water's edge in South Africa is undoubted, and both the older, as 

 well as the Permian, conglomerates clearly point to rigorous cHmatic 

 conditions. 



Sir Andrew Ramsay's evidence as to the European Paleozoic 

 Ice Age,^ and the character of the striations on the stones, is admitted, 

 even by those who do not accept his explanation, to be strongly 

 suggestive, and had Sir Andrew Ramsay stopped at this, his theory, 

 perhaps, by now would have been accepted ; but he attempted more. 

 He believed that he could trace the origin of the pebbles and bowlders 

 to the Silurian hills of north Wales, and he concluded that they 

 had been transported by floating ice connected with glaciers which 

 existed among those mountains in the Permian period. It was, 

 however, easily demonstrated that the blocks need not have been 

 transported from afar; the ridge of old Paleozoic and pre- Cambrian 

 rocks which has been exposed in the Charnwood forest area may 

 very well have been the parent source of the inclusions. The brec- 

 cias, again, instead of becoming coarser nearer the source attributed 

 to them by Sir Andrew Ramsay, as was required by his theory, 

 were found to become so as they were followed to the east and south- 

 east. As far as I can gather, the Paleozoic Ice Age theory in Europe 



1 W. Howchin and J. W. E. David, Report of the Australian Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Vol. IX (1902), pp. 194-200. 



2 "On the Occurrence of Angular, Sub-angular, Polished and Striated Frag- 

 ments and Bowlders in the Permian Breccia of Shropshire, Worcestershire, etc., and 

 on the Probable Existence of Glaciers and Icebergs in the Permian Epoch," Quar- 

 terly Journal of the Geological Society, 1885, p. 185. 



