12 Sir H. H. Hoicorth — The Scandinavian Ice-sheet. 



Now, granting tlie possibility of a moraine profonde, as understood 

 and postulated by the Glacial champions, how are we to explain 

 this action of the ice ? Ice is not a rigid substance but a viscous 

 one ; when a viscous body, in moving along, meets with a deep 

 depression, it does not move down into the hollow and up again 

 on the other side, but it fills up the depression. 



Now, granting that a great ice-sheet came down from Sweden 

 towards Germany, dragging along with it and underneath it the 

 postulated moraine profonde, when it reached the Baltic trough it 

 would pour down into it and fill it just as water fills a hole iu 

 a river bottom, and having filled the hollow it would become 

 embayed in it. The ice coming on behind would then flow over 

 the embayed ice, which would remain as quiescent and unmoved 

 as I believe the water in deep pits in a river bed is ; but what 

 about the moraine profonde (that unverified postulate of the wilder 

 glacialists) ? What would become of it ? If, as we are told, an 

 ice-sheet can drag a moraine profonde, consisting of loose materials 

 many scores of yards thick, along with it over a rocky bottom, are 

 we further to believe that it could do so over another ice-sheet as 

 long as the Baltic is wide, and thus carry its stony load safely into 

 Germany and Eussia ? Why, Mr. Maskelyne and all his confreres 

 are nothing to these wonderful wizards, who are responsible for 

 teaching a noble science to the ingenuous youth of the closing years 

 of this century of marvels. 



The glacialist apparently argues, however, that the ice would not 

 be embayed in this fashion, but would move on without any 

 difficulty down and up again and right across the great depression, 

 being impelled by the force behind it in some unexplained way, 

 and would carry its moraine profonde along with it. This presents 

 another difficulty : if the ice were not embayed, the stones surely 

 would be ; they would be caught in the hollow and accumulate in 

 it until that hollow was filled up level with the top of the bank 

 on either side. But the Baltic is not full of stones ; it is full of 

 water : hence the dilemma is twofold. 



I am bound to be quite candid and to say that a similar difficulty 

 applies to the aqueous distribution of the Scandinavian boulders 

 over the plains of Germany. Water rolling along loaded with 

 stones would inevitably drop its burden into the first ditch it rushed 

 athwart and fill it up, and the Baltic for our present purpose is only 

 a big ditch. How, then, comes it to be filled with water instead of 

 being choked up with drift? 



This difficulty compels those among us who do not approve of 

 appealing to causes until we have tested their competency, to try 

 to offer some explanation. The explanation I would offer is, that 

 the history of the Baltic depression has been very generally 

 misunderstood. Instead of being in its present form an old feature 

 in physical geography, one part of it is in fact a recent one, namely, 

 tliat part which runs east and west to the south of Sweden and to 

 the north of West Prussia and Mecklenburg. I have been satisfied 

 for some time, and I find that the view has been urged iu Germany 



