Sir Henry Ho^vorth — Replies to Criticisms. 497 



the distribution of strife and boulders in South Norway is most 

 instructive, all of them plainly showing that such an ice-sheet is au 

 impossibility unless we are to ignore the facts, for the Norwegian 

 ice is shown not to have even extended to the islands on its coast. 

 All this, and a great deal more, I have called attention to at very 

 great length elsewhere ; and I am bound to say I felt surprised that 

 Mr. Harker, whose laurels have been won as a petrologist, should 

 have ventured into the very intricate and difficult region of glacial 

 geology without ascertaining what the best men (I mean the men 

 ] quote) had already done, and should not have felt some hesitation 

 in basing so stupendous a postulate as a North Sea ice-sheet upon 

 the occurrence at Dimlington of some stones like the rocks found 

 in Viken. 



Mr. Harker complains that I have travestied his argument by 

 converting it into a simple syllogism. That argument is in print, 

 and any of your readers is at liberty to construct a more attractive 

 syllogism if he can. The fact is, some arguments look like travesties 

 when thus analysed. Apart from this, Mr. Harker would oblige me 

 by re-stating what he actually meant when, in view of the postulate 

 admitted by him and Mr. Lamplugh, that more than nine-tenths 

 of the Yorkshire boulders came from the north-west, he adduced as 

 a priori probable that the other tenth came from the north-east, 

 or rather the east. 



He misunderstood me if he supposed I questioned his identifica- 

 tion of the rocks in question. As a petrographer he is my master, 

 and a very accomplished master; when he wanders away into 

 glacial geology he has not the same vantage. When I said that in 

 my rambles in East Anglia, and on the coasts of Durham and 

 Yorkshire, I had not myself met with these so-called Scandinavian 

 stones, I meant not that such stones do not occur there, but that 

 they are distributed very locally, which they are. In referring to 

 another petrologist it was for the purpose of saying that we must be 

 very certain that we have exhausted every possibility of these stones 

 having come from the Cheviots, or some other British site, before 

 we take the course of going to the Cattegat for them ; and that, 

 inasmuch as the vast mass of the boulders found with them came 

 from the north-west, it is, prima facie, probable that they also may 

 have come from some buried or undiscovered dyke or outflow in 

 Britain, more especially as the Laurvig rock is itself so very local in 

 Norway. Assuredly this is a reasonable position to take. 



Supposing, however, they come from the Cattegat — the next 

 question is, how did they come ? That was, and remains, the really 

 interesting question between us. I argued (in view of the facts 

 already mentioned) that a Scandinavian ice-sheet is an impossibility. 

 At all events, if it be possible, the facts collected by some of the 

 most experienced geologists, Norwegian and English, have to be 

 explained. Mr. Harker has ignored them all, and inasmuch as 

 it was he who was mainly responsible for this correspondence, I 

 think it would be welcome to us all if he were to suggest some 

 answer to them. 



DECADE IV. — VOL. I. — NO. XI. 32 



