566 Correspondence — Mr. Alfred Harher. 



to me to enter the lists against " the best men " among Glacial 

 geologists — meaning, as he rather quaintly explains, the men he 

 quotes. 



The sole statement of mine with which we are concerned is that 

 certain boulders extracted by Mr. Lamplugh and myself from the 

 Holderness Boulder-clays are of Norwegian origin. Extricating 

 from Sir Henry's communication what is germane to this question, 

 I note first that the ballast theory has taken a more definite shape. 

 It may have occurred to the writer that there is no port on the 

 Holderness coast, and that the number of vessels from Christiania 

 cast away there is limited. For whatever reason, Sir Henry now 

 carries us back to the age of the Vikings, who, it appears, ballasted 

 their ships with little pieces of rliombenporphyr, and used small 

 pebbles of laurvikite for anchors ; and he, apparently, would have 

 us believe that the stones now on the strand have lain there un- 

 disturbed for many centuries ! To anyone who has watched the 

 movement of this beach, which no artificial works have been able 

 to hold, or who reflects that in the days of the Vikings the 

 Holderness coast-line must certainly have been several miles to 

 seaward of its present site, this idea will come with all the force 

 of novelty. 



But, besides the pirates from Viken, Sir Henry has two other 

 strings to his bow. One is the idea that we have mistaken boulders 

 driven into the face of the cliff by high tides for boulders belonging 

 to the clay. Sir Henry is rather fertile in suggesting foolish 

 blunders that somebody else may have made, and I do not see how 

 he is to be convinced on this point except by personally examining 

 the cliffs that he writes about, which is perhaps too much to 

 expect from so busy an author. But, since he inquires whether 

 boulders of the rocks in question have been found inland, I venture 

 to remind him of such a find made at Cambridge by an observer 

 in whose caution he has, I am sure, full confidence. It was recorded 

 by me in your July Number, and still awaits Sir Henry's attention. 

 In the northern counties, where so many thousands of boulders have 

 been critically examined, there is no record of the types in question 

 except from the eastei-n coast-line. 



This last significant fact will afford exercise for Sir Henry's 

 ingenuity with reference to his remaining alternative, viz. that these 

 rock-types may occur in situ somewhere in Britain, apparently in 

 Durham, the Cheviots, or the Lake District. Assuredly this sugges- 

 tion cannot have been submitted to the writer's petrological adviser. 

 Eecalling that the disputed boulders, of at least four distinct types, 

 have all been matched in one district of Norway, and that the 

 British areas indicated, which are as thoroughly known as any part 

 of this country, have yielded nothing remotely resembling any one 

 of those types, we may fairly ask for some surer ground for this 

 very original hypothesis than the exigencies of Sir Henry Howorth's 

 glacial theories. 



St. John's College Cambkidge. Alfred Habkee. 



Aztffust I8th, 1894. 



