Sir H. H. Hoicorth — Erratic Boulders in Drift. 155 



certainly Noi'wegian, and that these Norwegian boulders have 

 actually been found in undisturbed Boulder-clay and in its associated 

 beds, and that, therefore, if they are to be explained, some other 

 explanation than the one I gave must be forthcoming. My present 

 object is not to point out what that cause was, but to show that it 

 was not, and could not be, ice. Those who have invoked an ice- 

 sheet in the North Sea, and have thus explained the portage of the 

 Norwegian stones, so far as I know have done so, firstly, in order to 

 account for those stones ; secondly, to account for the diversion of 

 the Durham drift to the south, it being thought that only a barrier 

 of ice in the North Sea would have diverted the supposed ice of the 

 Tees, with its burden, to the southward ; and thirdly, to account for 

 the peculiar glaciation of the Shetlands. This theory of the North 

 Sea ice-sheet has had some vicissitudes in its history, and I have had 

 a good deal to say to it on other occasions. At first it was made to 

 occupy the whole North Sea area, extending as far as the five- 

 hundred fathom line. Then Professor James Geikie went to the 

 Faroes, and found that those islands had had a local set of glaciers of 

 their own, so that it was impossible to believe that the great ice-sheet 

 had extended over them. It was still, however, maintained to have 

 existed on a great scale, and made to overwhelm the Shetlands, 

 although not a trace of one undoubted Norwegian boulder had ever 

 been found in those islands ; while Mr. Milne Home, a most ex- 

 perienced Glacial geologist, and Chairman of the Scotch Boulder 

 Committee, continually pressed the conclusion, as it seems to me 

 unanswerably, against the Geological Surveyors that the strise pointed 

 in a direction inconsistent with such an ice-sheet. Then came tlie 

 observations on the Lofoden Islands, showing that they are pinnacled 

 and unweathered, and therefore that no ice-sheet could ever have 

 overrun them ; then came Pettersen's famous examination of the 

 question from the Norwegian side, showing that the ice from Western 

 Norway, far from having traversed the North Sea, had not even 

 reached the line of islets that run down that coast. This conclusion, 

 which I have enlarged upon in my " Glacial Nightmare," has been 

 extended to South- Western Norway by De Geers, whose work is 

 much relied upon by Dr. James Geikie, and who says that in the 

 second Ice Age (that is, with him, the great one) it is improbable 

 that the land-ice traversed the deep channel which now bounds the 

 coast of South-Western Norway. 



Dr. James Geikie, who was with Croll the joint prophet of the 

 original North Sea monster, has, in the last edition of his " Ice 

 Age," made a great concession to the enemy on this question. 

 Speaking of the glaciation of Scandinavia, he now says : " Along 

 the west of Norway the great fiords were at the same time occupied 

 by glaciers, whieh do not appear to have extended beyond the general 

 coast-line, but carved their icebergs there " (" Great Ice Age," p. 46. 

 The italics are mine). For this conclusion the authority of Pettersen 

 and De Geers is quoted, and it is a very just one. How it is possible 

 in any waj'^ to reconcile it with Professor Geikie's two maps of 

 Europe at the period of maximum glaciation and the third Glacial 



