224 Sir H. H. Sotcorth — Water versus Ice. 



two. Possibly it was caused by the two currents, one of the Wash, the 

 other of the open sea. It is clearly marine, like the gravels of the 

 neighbourhood. Is it a dune ? or a bar ? or a bank ? " (" Glacial 

 Geology of Great Britain," pp. 340-1.) 



The same writer refers to a curious ridge of Boulder-clay extending 

 from Slickney through Sibsey in Lincolnshire, and significantly adds : 

 "This is a shoal or bar" (id., p. 333). Again, he says: — "Above 

 Louth is a very low flat ridge of local character parallel to the chalk 

 cliif, but a quarter of a mile east of it, made of Hessle Clay. It has 

 none of the characters of a moraine, but has the shape of a subaqueous 

 sand bar or mud tanh " (id., p. 235). I hold that the same arguments 

 apply to the mounds and ramparts of Eastern Yorkshire which have 

 been so readily accepted as moraines by writers who see ice ever}"^- 

 where, and I prefer to strengthen my view by a quotation or two 

 from the writer last named, who is so often frank where frankness 

 is much needed. He is disposed to treat some of the mounds as 

 morainic, but has to confess that those near Gristhorpe are rounded 

 in outline as if either made in water or subsequently submerged 

 (id., p. 206). In regard to the hummocks between Breckton and 

 Speeton, he associates them with the similar ones in Holderness which 

 contain shells and shell fragments, showing, as he says, " that if it 

 is a moraine it was made under water," while the fauna is much 

 less Arctic in character than in the Bridlington Crag beds. "Where 

 shells do not occur the beds in these mounds are sorted into sands 

 and clays and gravels, and rudely stratified conditions quite 

 inconsistent with true moraines, which consist of heterogeneous 

 " muck." 



The laminated clays and the sifted sands in these mounds 

 are assuredly conclusive evidence that they were made by water 

 and nothing else. The fact is, glacialist champions are content 

 merely to note the existence of mounds somewhat resembling 

 in their outward contours those left by glaciers, and forget that 

 water deposits similar mounds ; and in order to test whether 

 they are moraines or not we must make sections in them and 

 see whether traces of stratification and sifting are to be found. 

 In regard to the mounds and so-called eskers of Eastern England, 

 those I have seen bear the inevitable impress of having resulted 

 from contending currents of water, sometimes rushing at a rapid 

 pace and sometimes retreating, and are in no sense moraines at all. 

 The best proof that they are not moraines is to be derived probably 

 from the corresponding Flemish deposits. There we should expect 

 to see these mounds repeated on a great scale if they were 

 moraines, for the country is flat and uniform in outline, but 

 instead of this we have a uniform mantle of gradually thinning- 

 out sands. This thinning out, again, is quite contrary to all the 

 analogies of glacier deposits, which are deepest at the foot of 

 the glacier, and, like the similar thinning out of the Chalky Clay 

 and the gradual diminution of the size of the boulders as we 

 depart from the centre of distribution, is only consistent with 

 a widely extended tumultuous current. Such a current, or rather 

 a series of currents, has, in fact, been postulated by the extreme 



