Sir H. H. Howorth — Water versus Ice. 213 



deposits must have differed entirely in their composition and mode 

 of deposition, and that denudation will not account for all the 

 apparent breaks which are discovered on attempting to map 

 a district. 



Note. — Mr. Morton writes that in the North Wales series, 

 mentioned on p. 165, "the Arenaceous Limestone and Upper 

 Black Limestone are one and the same subdivision." — W. H., 

 April 15, 1897. 



V. — Water versus Ice as an Explanation of the Surface 



Beds of Eastern England. 



By Sir Henry H. Howorth, K.C.I.E., M.P., F.E.S., F.G.S. 



IN former papers on the surface deposits of Eastern England. 

 I have analyzed the conditions of their occurrence and the 

 character of their contents in view of the current theory which 

 makes them the products of ice during an Ice Age. I have 

 endeavoured to show that, tested by every empirical method, they 

 utterly fail to sustain such a conclusion ; — that in every character 

 by which we can test these beds, or their component parts, they 

 clearly and emphatically point to some other origin and cause than 

 that of ice ; and, on the other hand, that ice such as it is known to 

 us, either in our laboratories or in Nature's laboratory, is quite 

 incapable of producing the results demanded from it by the 

 champions of the Glacial School who have discussed the surface 

 geology of Eastern England. This negative conclusion is, of 

 course, a very important one when we consider what a dominating 

 influence this School has at this moment, not only among official 

 geologists, but among the pundits of Burlington House, where 

 Lyell's followers have pushed their master's teaching to the most 

 extravagant and outrageous length. 



If ice be an impossible cause of the phenomena we wish to explain, 

 and if the teaching of half a century on this question will certainly 

 in great part have to be reversed, whither are we to turn, except 

 to the cause which satisfied the Patres Conscripti of our science in 

 the days when, before a man became a geologist, he thought it 

 necessary to have a wide and generous training in other sciences and 

 branches of knowledge, men who wei'e mathematicians and physicists 

 as well as geologists, who were in the habit of verifying the capacity 

 of the causes to which they appealed, and who were not tied 

 to some preposterous scholastic prejudice like the theory of 

 Uniformity. They appealed without doubt or difficulty to Water 

 and not to Ice as the main and the efficient explanation of the 

 phenomena of recent geology. At their feet I leai-ned what I know, 

 and by their creed on this question facts and logic both compel me 

 to abide. Water has this supreme claim over Ice, that, whereas the 

 phenomena to be explained absolutely refuse to conform to the 

 proved qualities of ice, they are all consistent with the qualities and 

 characteristics of water. There is not one of them whicli is not so. 

 Water can carry as heavy weights as ice, and can carry them as far. 



