8ir H. H. Soworth — Surface Geology of N. Europe. 265 



iinarranged shows that if thrown down by water it could not have 

 been by a succession of efforts, which woukl have laid down 

 stratified beds, but by one impulse of a most powerful and 

 portentous character. 



This is again testified to by another fact, which I have not seen 

 noticed, but to which I can vouch for from personal observation. When 

 a section occurs in an as and the section has been slightly weathered 

 by the wind, it will be seen that in many oases, where the materials 

 are fine, and consist of sand or clay or fine pebbles, and lines of 

 stratification and laminee occur in them, that these lines resemble 

 those to which I have called attention occurring in the cliffs at 

 Cromer. They form perfectly continuous lines of curvature ex- 

 tendiug from the top to the bottom of the deposit, showing that the 

 whole deposit has been the result of one impulse, and not of many. 

 This was especially beautifully visible in an open section I noticed 

 close to Omberg, in West Gothland, which I recently visited. This 

 lamination is a great deal commoner in the as than is generally 

 supposed. It often requires the face of the section to be slightly 

 wind-weathered before it is disclosed, and I am convinced that it will 

 be found pretty nearly everywhere when no large boulders occur. 

 Wherever the rush of water was sufficiently great to carry with it 

 the large stones, then, it would seem, it laid down its load hetero- 

 geneously. Where the rush was less marked, and the water could 

 only carry lighter materials, these lines of stratification were 

 developed. 



The most striking and conclusive proof, however, that these 

 gigantic ramparts were thrown down by some rapid and portentous 

 movement of water rather than by exceptional tidal action, is the 

 fact so much overlooked by those who have written on the asar, 

 namely, their running up and down hill without consideration for 

 the lines of drainage, and this, too, in their line of march. No tide, 

 no race, no movement of water of a torrential character, such as we 

 know it, in any of the oceans or seas of the world, would drive 

 along such a great mass of water in a number of parallel currents, 

 keeping the same lines of movement athwart hill and dale, and lay 

 down enormous masses of heavy unsorted stones in gigantic ridges. 

 To do this the water must have been not only enormous in 

 quantity, but the impulse which drove it must also have been of 

 quite a cataclysmic character. We can compare it only with the 

 great waves of translation which followed the earthquake of Lisbon, 

 or those which followed great earthquakes in Java some years ago, 

 and of which another example occurred in Japan quite recently. 

 These are the models and types to which we must turn in explaining 

 the asar and other phenomena of the Drift. We have only to 

 multiply the potency of the cause and the problem is explained, and 

 this, as we have seen, the critical examination of the facts enables 

 us to do. The sudden upheaval and breakage of the solid strata 

 in Central Sweden over several degrees of latitude underneath 

 a widespread sea — this is what the facts compel us to accept, and 

 this is sufficient to solve our difficulty. 



