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Reports and Proceedings—British Association. 461 
REPORTS AND PROCHHDINGS. 
perse. beth i 
Firty-ninta Annuat Meetine oF THE British ASSOCIATION 
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 
NeEwcastLE-upon-Tynz, 1889. 
ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SECTION OF THE British Assocra- 
T10oN. By Professor James Gurxis, LL.D., F.R.SS. L. & E., F.G.S., 
President of the Section, September 12th, 1889. 
FTER some introductory remarks, Prof. James Geikie said: 
Perhaps there is no department of geological inquiry that has 
given rise to more controversy than that of Glacial Geology, which 
I have selected for the subject of this address. Hardly a single step 
in advance has been taken without veliement opposition. But the 
din of contending sides is not so loud now—the dust of the conflict 
has to some extent cleared away, and the positions which have been 
lost or maintained, as the case may be, can be readily discerned. 
The glacialist who can look back over the last twenty-five years of 
wordy conflict has every reason to be jubilant and hopeful. Many 
of those who formerly opposed him have come over to his side. It 
is true he has not had everything his own way. Some extreme 
views have been abandoned in the struggle; that of a great polar 
ice-sheet, for example, as conceived by Agassiz. I am not aware, 
however, that many serious students of Glacial Geology ever adopted 
that view. But it was quite an excusable hypothesis, and has been 
abundantly suggestive. Had Agassiz lived to see the detailed work 
of these later days, he would doubtless have modified his notion, 
and come to accept the view of large continental glaciers which has 
taken its place. 
The results obtained by geologists, who have been studying the 
peripheral areas of the drift-covered regions of our continent, are 
such as to satisfy us that the drifts of those regions are not iceberg- 
droppings, as we used to suppose, but true morainic matter and 
fluvio-glacial detritus. Geologists have not jumped to this conclu- 
sion—they have only accepted it after laborious investigation of — 
the evidence, Since Dr. Otto Torell, in 1875, first stated his belief 
that the “diluvium” of North Germany was of glacial origin a great 
literature on the subject has sprung up, a perusal of which will 
show that with our German friends Glacial Geology has passed 
through much the same succession of phases as with us. At first 
icebergs are appealed to as explaining everything—next we meet 
with sundry ingenious attempts at a compromise between floating- 
ice and a continuous ice-sheet. As observations multiply, however, 
the element of floating-ice is gradually eliminated, and all the phe- 
nomena are explained by means of land-ice and ‘‘schmelz-wasser ” 
alone. It is a remarkable fact that the iceberg hypothesis has 
always been most strenuously upheld by geologists whose labours 
have been largely confined to the peripheral areas of drift-covered 
countries. In the upland and mountainous tracts, on the other hand, 
