The Chalk and its Dislocations. 309 
This portage and redeposition are assuredly the most insoluble cruces 
-of all to the champions of ‘‘ omnipotent ice.” Granting that the chalk 
was broken and the pieces lifted from their sockets by some force or 
other, how could ice take up these vast masses and fragile slabs of 
chalk, with sand and gravel attached to them, still retaining their 
original delicate lamination? First, as to the portage. When a glacier 
carries stones like some of these angular chalk masses (which, be it 
remembered, are of every shape and size down to the smallest chalk 
rubble), it can only do so on its back. It is thus the angular erratics 
of Greenland, Norway, and Switzerland are being carried now, But in 
all these cases there is no difficulty in accounting for the presence of the 
blocks on the back of the glacier. They have in all cases been detached 
from peaks projecting above the ice, and have rolled down upon its 
back. The present case is very different. There is no question of 
projecting peaks of chalk detaching portions of themselves, and of these 
detached pieces rolling down upon the ice, for, as we have seen, when 
they were formed by the breakage and dislocation of the chalk beds 
those beds were covered with Crag containing unweathered shells still 
im sit, showing that they were lying at the bottom of the sea. How 
could an ice-sheet traversing the North Sea (if such a postulate is 
possible out of a nursery story) transfer from the bottom of that sea 
to its own back great cakes of chalk still covered with shelly Crag 
beds, and with their long bodies uncracked and intact, is indeed 
a puzzle: as great a puzzle as it would be to push a number of eggs 
through the steel plate of an ironclad without breaking their shells 
or disintegrating their yolks. 
If the ice-sheet did not carry the chalk cakes and other débris on 
its back, but underneath it, as the advocates of moraines profondes 
argue, the puzzle seems even greater, for it could hardly fail to roll 
the smaller masses and to round the angles of all. There is virtually 
no rounding or weathering visible, however, but all are intact. Such 
portage, again, would scrape off the Crag which covers some of them 
and would break up its contained shells into powder, for it is clear 
that if ice can moye stones underneath its bed when travelling over level 
ground, which I dispute, and have written a great deal to disprove, 
it can only have done so by its lower layers dragging along the débris 
underlying the ice. Such a process, when all movement in the ice was 
molecular only, and the pace so slow that its rate is not appreciable 
to the senses, seems, however, quite incredible. Where the motive 
force was to be derived from to enable a very intangible internal 
movement of ice particles in an ice-sheet to move along vast masses 
of chalk many thousands of tons in weight, by dragging them under- 
neath its mass, is incomprehensible to me. That it should have done 
‘so without rubbing down the sharp edges of these masses, or in some 
measure weathering them, and should not have stripped them of 
their adherent layers of finely laminated and loosely aggregated sands 
with delicate shells in them, without destroying either laminations 
.or shells, may be pronounced impossible until some glacialist has had 
‘the courage and frankness not merely to shoot a wild hypothesis at 
-our heads but to reconcile it with common-sense. 
In every way the problem is faced; therefore, whether on a priory 
