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



uncomforfable. So far as I know, there is not a single feature of 

 any kind presented by tlie surface beds of Eastern England which 

 in any way resembles a lake deposit. Nor can I see how any lake 

 could possibly exist in this part of England, on the scale and of the 

 character required to explain the phenomena. If we make a contour 

 map of the area occupied by the Chalky Clay and its associated 

 deposits, and try to realize how by any process the district they 

 occupy could be converted into a lake, we shall indeed be puzzled. 

 Lakes cannot exist without dams or fences to restrain and keep back 

 their watery contents. What and where were the dams in this case ? 

 We have shown the impossibility of conceding a solid North Sea to 

 act as a barrier on the east ; but even if we could concede it, how ia 

 it possible to believe that a lake of open water could exist on the 

 west side of the great icy barrier, when the climatic conditions 

 in the North Sea were such as to be consistent with a solid 

 ice-mass there? But granting such a barrier on the east, what 

 were or could be the barriers of such a lake on the south 

 and west ? These barriers must have been stupendous, if we 

 are to account for the Chalky Clay and its associated beds at the 

 various elevations at which they occur. Where is there a trace of 

 anything of the kind ? Where, again, are the fresh-water shells, 

 which would certainly be found in large sheets of fresh water, such 

 as this is supposed to have been ? Where, in fact, is there any 

 debris of any kind pointing to a fresh- water origin ? 



What, again, of the contents of the beds themselves? Marly clays, 

 no doubt, are deposited in lakes, the result of deposition from the 

 streams that flow into them, but such clays are arranged in regularly 

 disposed laminae, and ai'e not heterogeneous masses such as the 

 Chalky Clay is. 



Again, this Chalky Clay and the associated gravels and sands 

 could not have originated in the bottom of the lake itself, from the 

 disintegration of its own bed. Lakes do not deepen themselves by 

 a process of disintegration of this kind ; they are gradually and 

 continuously being filled up by accumulations. So that these soft 

 beds must have been brought in by streams, but if so, how is it 

 they are not more efficiently sorted ? It is true the sands and gravels 

 are separated from the clays, but each of these sets of beds is studded 

 with blocks and boulders, which have only in rare cases come from 

 a distance, and for the most part are derived from the locality, and 

 which under the influence of gravity would have been sorted apart 

 if their portage had been like that of other river-borne materials. 



Again, when rivers bear materials into lakes they do not drop 

 them all over the lake-bottom in the irregular fashion we see in 

 these beds. They drop them in a most methodical way by making 

 deltas, which gradually enlarge until they fill up the lake. There 

 are no deltas here, nor anything like deltas. 



Where, lastly, are we to get the rivers in the particular area in 

 question whose current and force should be equal to carrying the 

 stones and shingle and gravel, which form such a large proportion 

 of these beds ? They must have been torrential rivers with rapid 



