470 Notices of Memoirs — Mr. Sudleston's Address — 



We may now be supposed to have arrived at a period when the 

 physical features of this immediate district did not differ very 

 materially from what they are at present. The great Tee Age was 

 in full force throughout Northern Europe, and, according to views 

 which meet with increasing favour, the German Ocean and the Irish 

 Sea were filled with immense glaciers. "What was taking place at 

 that time in the estuary of the Severn ? 



This is a case which requires the exercise of the scientific 

 imagination, of course under due control. There is probably nothing 

 more extraordinary in the history of modern investigation than the 

 extent to which geologists of an earlier date permitted themselves to 

 be led away by the fascinating theories of Croll. The astronomical 

 explanation of that ' will o' the wisp,' the cause of the great Ice 

 Age, is at present greatly discredited, and we begin to estimate at 

 their true value those elaborate calculations which were made to 

 account for events which in all probability never occurred. Ex- 

 travagance begets extravagance, and the unreasonable speculations 

 of men like Belt and Croll have caused some of our more recent 

 students to suffer from ' the nightmare.' 



Nevertheless Croll, when he confined his views to the action of 

 ice, showed himself a master of the subject, and his suggestions are 

 often worthy of attention, even when we are not convinced. Writing 

 in the Gkological Magazine in 1871, he points out that the ice 

 always seeks the path of least resistance ; and he refers to the 

 probability that an outlet to the ice of the North Sea would be 

 found along the natural hollow formed by the valleys of the Trent, 

 the Warwickshire Avon, and the Severn. Ice moving in this 

 direction, he says, would no doubt pass down into the Bristol 

 Channel and thence into the Atlantic. Again, ^ referring to the 

 great Scandinavian glacier, he says : "It is hardly possible to 

 escape the conclusion that a portion of it at least passed across the 

 south of England, entering the Atlantic in the direction of the 

 Bristol Channel." These views were not based on any local 

 knowledge, but merely on general considerations. The problem as 

 to whether there are any traces of the passage of such a body of ice 

 in the basin of the lower Severn must be worked out by local 

 investigators. Irrespective, too, of the hypothetical passage of a lobe 

 of the North Sea glacier, we are confronted by a much more genuine 

 question, namely, what was the possible termination towards the 

 south of the great body of ice with which our more advanced 

 glacialists have filled the Cheshire plain. 



A recent President of the Cotteswold Field Club, of whom un- 

 fortunately we must now speak as the late Mr. Lucy, took a lively 

 interest in the Pleistocene geology of the district, and his papers ia 

 the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Field Club have always attracted 

 attention. His map of the distribution of the gravels of the Severn, 

 Avon, and Evenlode, and their extension over the Cotteswold Hills, 

 prepai-ed in conjunction with Mr. Etheridge, is a valuable contribution 



1 Geol. Mag., Dec. II, Vol. I (1874), p. 257. 



