Prof. P. F. Kendall—The Glaciation of Ireland. 51 
level on both sides cf the valley extends a beach rivalling the 
famous Parallel Roads of Glen Roy. 
The materials of the beaches were, according to the author, 
supplied by marginal streams flowing along the edge of the ice, and 
for this reason a tributary valley has developed a terrace only on 
the west, that is the ice-ward, side. 
The phenomena to which the title refers are a series of crescentic 
moraines—gravelly or sandy where below the lake-level, mainly 
clayey above. These occur on two scales of magnitude—larger 
moraines at intervals of about a mile and, above the lake-level, minor 
ridges at intervals of 50 to 100 yards. Mr. Wright ventures the 
suggestion that these correspond respectively to Briickner’s thirty- 
year cycle of glacial fluctuations in the Alps and to the annual 
retreats established by de Geer’s study of the nodes in the eskers 
studied by him in connexion with his seasonal clays, two layers of 
the clay representing a year’s retreat. Mr. Wright finds confirmation 
of this view in the successive knobs of an esker close to Kenmare. 
The esker is about 600 yards long, and contains seven or eight of 
these hillocks. ‘‘ The rate of retreat thus indicated is about 80 yards 
per annum.” 
The author applies similar methods to the great morainic amphi- 
theatres near Killarney and Killorglin, from which he draws 
analogous deductions. 
While the generalizations of the author of this paper may strike 
some as being rather too bold, it must be borne in mind that Glacial 
Geology has gone far beyond the stage when mere accumulation 
of undigested and unrelated facts should be recorded, and whether 
the time estimates suggested by Mr. Wright are accepted or not, 
he has indicated to British geologists a new method of inquiry that 
will certainly yield results of great interest and importance. 
Of Professor Gregory’s paper entitled “‘ The Irish Eskers ’’,416 is 
difficult to express my exact sentiments, for, despite the dignity of 
the Philosophical Transactions quarto, I feel that it does less than 
justice to the subject, to the author’s position as a geologist, and to 
the large public to which his writings appeal. Of new field observa- 
tions there are very few, and those few are susceptible of other 
interpretations than those the author puts upon them. The citations 
of the literature of British Glacial Geology are almost confined to 
a bygone generation; and the illustrations, where original, rarely 
exhibit features that are truly diagnostic, while in more than one 
instance the text is directly contradictory of the figure. The 
proposition which the author sets out to establish is that, contrary 
to the opinion expressed by Professor Sollas in his well-known 
memoir, the Irish eskers are mainly marginal—a. species of well- 
washed bank laid down parallel to the edge of a dwindling ice-sheet 
that terminated in a rather shallow sea. Others he regards as the 
1 Phil. Trans., ser. B, vol. ccx, pp. 115-51. 
