56 Prof. P. F. Kendall—The Glaciation of Ireland. 
““ small fragments of broken shell’ an the boulder-clay of the Central 
Plain, of which some thousands of square miles was, according 
to Professor Gregory, occupied by the Esker Sea, with a maximum 
depth of over 60 fathoms ? 
Just as he fails to realize the full consequences of his dictum 
regarding the marine origin of boulder-clay, so equally he overlooks 
all that is implied by his 400 feet submergence. Perhaps he will 
permit me to supply the omission by the convenient method of 
comparison with an area where the conditions his hypothesis requires 
were most exactly paralleled. I allude to the Baltic area—here, 
according chiefly to Brégger for Norway, de Geer for Sweden, 
and Sederholm for Finland, the shrinkage of the great ice- 
sheet of North-West Europe coincided with a depressed 
condition of Fenno-Scandia, so that the ice deposited its great 
moraines the Ra, or the Salpausselka, with which our author 
specifically compares the Irish eskers, under the waters of 
a greatly enlarged Baltic, in which finely laminated muds, the 
“varviglera’”’? of de Geer, were laid down. Apart from the 
interest of de Geer’s ingenious use of these seasonal clays for 
the purpose of a time scale, the deposits are invaluable for the 
information they yield, both in Norway and Sweden, regarding the 
biological or ecological conditions of a sea extraordinarily like that 
postulated by Professor Gregory. The muds, sands, and gravels are 
by no means sterile, but over large areas yield a rich, abundant, and 
well-preserved fauna of truly Arctic types. The level indicated by 
the deposits at the best-marked stage is almost exactly that assumed | 
by Professor Gregory, namely 135 metres. Is it too much to ask 
for even a single shelly deposit in the Irish plain comparable with 
those Brégeger has described ? 
I have had some opportunity of examining sections in many parts 
of Ireland during the past ten years, yet | have nowhere, except near 
Belfast, found anything in any degree comparable with these truly 
marine deposits; on the contrary, the boulder-clays, such as that 
covering the glaciated pre-Glacial beach in Ringabella Bay, co. Cork, 
are, as a rule, wholly devoid of the least semblance of lamination or 
bedding, and the materials, mud, sand, and stones, are confusedly 
intermingled in a fashion quite incompatible with deposition in 
water. | 
To conclude, the memoir seems to me so deficient in observational 
basis, and the far-reaching implications so generally ignored, that, 
attractive as the main proposition may seem, it should be regarded 
merely as an ingenious guess, in support of ‘which evidence might 
well be sought by some geologist having time and inclination to make 
a methodical and persistent attack upon the problem. 
