BY FRITZ NOETLING, M.A., Ph.D., ETC. 167 



The pleistocene glacier deposited its debris in a sea, 

 which became later on inhabited with the Turritella 

 fauna. Graduall}'- the sea encroached on the land, the 

 upper parts of the moraine were worked up and re- 

 deposited as a conglomerate bed, while small inlayers 

 of fossiliferous sand became mixed up with the upper 

 parts of the moraine. 



The Turritella-sandstone would therefore be of post 

 glacial age, and the basalt would be younger still. 



As far as I can see there could be two objections to 

 this theory, viz., the cracks in the boulders and the sup- 

 position that the inlayers of fossiliferous sand are 

 secondary infiltrations. 



I have shown above that almost all the boulders are 

 intersected by a series of parallel fissures. If sandstone 

 and moraine belonged together, one would assume that 

 the cracks continued into the sandstone, and that the 

 larger fossils were broken in a way similar to the 

 boulders. If my memory does not deceive me, I never 

 noticed such a feature, though I must confess I did not 

 pay much attention to it at the time. However that may 

 be, even if the cracks did not extend to the Turritella 

 sandstone, we might assume that the subsidence of land 

 which caused the pressure also opened an inroad for the 

 sea, in which the younger Turritella sandstone was de- 

 posited. Though the boulders in the older moraine 

 were therefore broken, the same pressure did not affect 

 the younger Turritella-sandstone. 



The other objection is the more serious of the two. 

 In order to make it fully understood, we will accept for 

 the moment the old theory that the moraine forms the 

 base of the permian rocks, and that the Turritella-sand- 

 stone is of tertiary (eocene) age. We would then have 

 one of the most stupendous discordances known in the 

 history of the earth. The whole of the mesozoic forma- 

 tion, viz., triassic, Jurassic, and cretaceous periods, even 

 a part of the younger palaeozoic (middle and upper 

 permian) would be missing. 



I do not wish to enter into the discussion whether 

 the strata representing these periods were always miss- 

 ing or have been removed by subsequent denudation. 

 All I wish to poifit out, that if the views hitherto held 



