Sir E. H. Houorth— Surface GeoJogy of N. Europe. 201 



Let us now consider the theories which have been adopted to 

 explain the asar. In the very early days of the Glacial fever — if 

 I may coin an incongruous but not inappropriate phrase — when 

 Agassiz reigned supreme, they were pronounced to be moraines. 

 This conclusion is one of those which form the despair of rational 

 science, for beyond the fact that they are heaped-up mounds of earth 

 and stones, there does not seem to be a single feature about them 

 resembling moraines. The stones they contain are rounded, water- 

 worn boulders, in no way like glacier stones. Scratched stones, or 

 those with flat sides, are never found in them. The beds of sand 

 and clay they contain are sifted out and separated from the boulders, 

 and are stratified and absolutely different to the mixed-up hetero- 

 geneous " muck " forming moraine stuff. The shells they contain in 

 their upper layers are marine shells, many of them perfect and of 

 very delicate texture. Marine shells and diatoms are not the product 

 of ice-sheets or of glaciers, and do not occur in moraines. Putting 

 their contents aside, their other features are quite different to 

 moraines. Terminal moraines, which are the only kind of moraines 

 distinctly resembling some phases of the asar in contour, are always 

 planted athwart the line of march of the ice. The asar, on the 

 contrary, are all roughly parallel to the line in which the stones 

 have moved, and to the line also kept by the striaB on the rocks. 

 If moraines at all, the asar must therefore be medial or lateral 

 moraines. Who has ever seen lateral or medial moraines made up 

 of water-worn boulders and of stratified sands and brickearths con- 

 taining marine shells, or seen them ranged in a large series of 

 parallel mounds with subsidiary branches, and with no high lands 

 in between from which their contents could be derived ? But 

 I need not press the argument further. 



Berzelius, in a letter to Professor Leonhard written as far back as 

 1841, says: " Agassiz' friend Desor visited us in September last 

 year, and on seeing the immense boulder deposits which in this 

 country are named asar, stated without hesitation that these 

 phenomena could not be explained by glaciers, and that they were 

 not moraines." (Q.J.G.S., iii, 76.) 



Durocher also long ago analyzed the various features of the asar 

 in a masterly manner, comparing them point by point with moraines 

 and their structure, and showed how completely they differed from 

 them. Eeclus, who, although not a professed geologist, has treated 

 geological problems with great intelligence in his great geographical 

 work, is not less emphatic in his conclusion, Murchison and 

 Verneuil and other " old masters " who examined the problem on the 

 ground were of the same opinion. Nor do I know of any Scandi- 

 navian geologist who now maintains the view that the asar are 

 moraines. If there be any geologists that do so anywhere, it must 

 be in America, where the most extravagant school of glacialists 

 survives, and where official geology is so dominant, and every officer 

 of the Survey is apparently so dragooned by the conditions of the 

 service, that they follow their bellwethers with commendable loyalty 

 and discipline. 



