64 Dugald Bell — The " Great Submergence." 



have escaped striation by being carried on the surface of the ice ; 

 but " the shelly clay," Mr. Smith kindly informs us, " cannot possibly 

 have fallen on the surface of the ice, neither could it have been 

 carried up under it without many of the shells (if not all in this 

 case) having been striated." Therefore it is " physically impossible." 



We may remark that men of science are in general rather chary 

 of saying what is "physically impossible," or not impossible, and 

 the most capable are the most chary. It is awkward to pronounce 

 anything " physically impossible," and then find out that somehow 

 or other it has been done ! 



In the present instance, besides being carried on the ice, or 

 pushed along under it, may not shells, etc., be taken up into the 

 mass of the ice and encased and imbedded in it, and so transported 

 considerable distances uninjured ? Mr. Lamplugh, in one of his 

 admirable papers, has said that while he cannot fully explain how 

 the ice has done this, he has no doubt of the fact. He has found the 

 most delicate shells uninjured in the transported clays of the north- 

 east of England ; and in the Boulder-clay of British Columbia he 

 discovered shells actually more perfect than those he could pick up 

 on the existing beach. In the same way Mr. Mellard Reade has 

 noticed the occurrence of long thin slabs of chalk in the Boulder-clay 

 of Ci'omer, and marvelled how they could have been transported 

 entire or without being shattered to pieces.^ And Dr. James Geikie 

 Las remarked that boulders once imbedded in the ice may be carried 

 for " a hundred miles without suffering abrasion."^ 



Thinking the matter over, it has occurred to the present writer 

 that wherever the ice-sheet passes from a deeper to a shallower 

 part of its bed it has probably a tendency to insinuate itself beneath 

 anything resting on the slope up which it is moving, and lift or 

 licJc up such things (as stones, shells, masses of shelly clay) into 

 itself, and so carry them forward and upward with it. Thus the 

 Loch Lomond ice, passing from the deep part of that loch to the 

 shallower part, caught up numerous marine shells (the relics of a 

 preceding moderate submergence) and deposited them with the till 

 in the neighbourhood of Drymen. The Moray Firth ice, passing on 

 to the mainland of Caithness; the Irish Sea ice, impinging on Moel 

 Tryfaen, and the Loch Ness ice in its course towards Clava, seem all 

 to be instances of the same kind. 



But whether this suggestion be accepted or not does not alter the 

 fact. If Mr. Smith asserts that it is "physically impossible" we 



1 Q.J.G.S., vol. xxxviii. 



2 " Great Ice Age," 3rd edition, p. 204. — A good example of how materials may 

 be conveyed with very little injury when imbedded in the ice (in whatever way they 

 got there) is furnished by the well-known sad incident of Dr. Hamel's three guides, 

 who lost their lives by being swept by an avalanche into the herg-schrund of the 

 Glacier des Bossons, Mont Elanc, in 1820. In 1861 the glacier, near its lower 

 extremity, gave back the remains of what it had swallowed up forty-one years before. 

 " Scientific instruments, knapsacks, gloves, etc., were gradually set free from their 

 icy fetters. A gauze veil came out untorn and not much faded ; and the knapsack of 

 Pierre Carrier contained a leg of mutton perfectly recognisable ! " (See " Le Mont 

 Blanc," by C. Durier, and Main's " My Home iu the Alps," p. 68.) 



