Sir H. H. Hoicorth — Water versus Ice. 219 



falls to have done so, but there is no fall, or virtually none, in the 

 rivers of Eastern England ; and how could rivers by any process 

 convey into a lake deposits which ai'e distributed, as these surface 

 beds are distributed, over an undulating surface ? Kivers cannot run 

 up and down hill, and how could the contents of these beds become 

 mixed in the particular way we find them mixed in a lake ? How 

 could rocks from Norway and rocks from Durham be mixed with 

 those from Mount Sorrel and from the wolds of Lincoln and 

 Norfolk? A lake is not a churn, in which the contents are being 

 tossed about and mixed by some uneasy force. A lake is a singularly 

 quiet bourne, in which those objects which are conveyed lie at rest ; 

 and the work required in the present case, as we have seen, is the 

 bringing together from the four quarters of heaven of stones and 

 other ballast, mixing them and then distributing them. If this were 

 done by rivers, the rivers must have had the art and capacity of 

 flowing in opposite directions, a postulate which would have staggered 

 even Dr. Croll. The fact is, one can hardly restrain one's patience 

 in having to dissect and show the futility of a theory so void of 

 every rational element as that which attributes the soft deposits 

 of Eastern England to the operations of a lake. It is little short 

 of scientifically criminal for a man with high abilities who has 

 acquired a certain reputation to bewilder and defy the world by 

 throwing down such crudities, as if they settled anything or 

 answered any real questions, and to offer a factitious shield behind 

 which a crowd of thoughtless people, whose science is all deductive, 

 and who never sing solos but only join in a chorus, may take 

 their stand. 



The lacustrine theory exhausts the various explanations of the 

 soft beds of Eastern England which involve water operating in 

 its normal methods. If, as I have argued, water is not only 

 capable of explaining the phenomena, but is also alone capable 

 of doing so, it must, therefore, be water acting in quite a different 

 way to its normal methods. It must have been water acting in 

 great masses torrentially, such as was invoked by the Old Masters 

 of Geology, acting in the way, in fact, in which I have invoked 

 it in my " Glacial Nightmare." To this explanation I have seen 

 no reply except a pious exclamation of hori'or or two at such 

 a daring departure from the pontifical authority of Sir Charles 

 Lyell. This expression of opinion does not affect those who 

 have never worshipped at that shrine, and who believe with 

 Sedgwick and Murchison that the forces which periodically and con- 

 tinuously have torn and contorted the crystalline rocks of the Alps, 

 which have tossed the Miocene beds of the Eigi and set them 

 on their edges, and which have done stupendous work of a similar 

 kind in all latitudes and in all geological ages, were not exhausted 

 when we come to the end of the Tertiary period, and were as 

 capable then as they had often been before of crumpling and bending 

 and breaking the earth's crust, in Titanic fashion, and will assuredly 

 repeat their rough work again presently. This now is the real 

 inductive theory of Uniformity, to which the bastard theory of 



