Sir H. H. JSoicorth — Water versus Ice. 217 



districts are all derivative and belong to the horizon of the Norwich 

 Crag. The question has been asked over and over again, and bears 

 repeating. It is literally incredible that such a wide district should 

 have been submerged without leaving a trace of shells or other 

 marine debris to attest it ; but this is not all. If the submergence 

 were gradual and the upheaval the same, we ought to have endless 

 traces of beaches and shore-lines. Where are they ? Again, how could 

 the sea mix the contents of the Chalky Clay, and distribute them as 

 we find them over hundreds of square miles of country ? Nothing is 

 plainer than that the active operations of the sea are carried on 

 within a very short distance of the shore. It is only there that wind 

 and current chiefly work, and that gales and storms are effective. 

 In deep water and away from the shore, the bottom is quiescent, and 

 we have virtually no dynamical action. How, then, are we to under- 

 stand the bringing together and mixing of the rocky debris of the 

 surface beds and their distribution, as we find them, by means of 

 ocean-waters, the deposition of the clays and the sands and gravels in 

 the extraordinary way we find them, the occurrence of the Chalky 

 Clay only on one side of the chalky downs, the general drift of the 

 materials in one direction from their old source, and the sporadic 

 scattering of the mixture in all directions? There is literally not one 

 single feature in these beds which seems to me to be consistent 

 with their having been the product of a long-continued marine sub- 

 mergence assisted by icebergs; and I cannot help suggesting that 

 those geologists who are too experienced in the ways of land-ice and 

 know its capacity too well to believe in the fantastic nonsense that 

 has been written about ice-sheets, have in their despair appealed to 

 an alternative so lacking in empirical support, because they must 

 seize at any straw rather than surrender their fetish of Uniformity. 



Another theory to account for the Chalky Clay and its associated 

 deposits was formulated by Carviil Lewis, and it retains a con- 

 siderable importance since it has received the countenance of at 

 least one prominent English geologist. Lewis formulates his view 

 thus :— (1) " The Hessle Clay is due to a marginal lake. (2) When 

 this marginal lake burst westwards through various channels in the 

 chalk wolds it made an angular, torrential, flinty gravel ; the 

 unfossiliferons 'boulder-gravel' or 'cannon-shot ' gravel of Cromer 

 and Norwich. (3) Debacles thus flowing into the lower ground on 

 and west of the Chalk wolds, formed a more inland and second 

 series of lakes, which contained a mud filled with chalk; and this 

 is the great Chalky Boulder-clay. (4) This lake in turn filled up 

 and overflowed west and south, past Leicester and Rugby, etc., 

 along the Triassic country, making flinty and chalky gravels, the 

 Northern Drift of the Midland and Southern Counties, which is 

 torrential. (5) Rivers from glaciers at York and in Cheshire 

 joined the flinty streams." (" Glacial Geology of Great Britain," 

 p. 334, note.) 



When we read a series of obiter dicta like these, stated with the 

 utmost sang froid, without the slightest evidence of any kind to 

 support them, and are told this is science, it makes us feel almost 



