H. H. Howorth—Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 73 
In regard to this theory, one can hardly approach it seriously. 
Where, in glaciated regions like Greenland, do we find the ice being 
thrust up into the country from the sea in this fashion to the extent of 
1400 feet ? How could molluscs live at all in a sea occupied by such 
an ice-sheet which was scouring the bottom ? How could very delicate 
shells be found entire and unbroken, as Mr. Etheridge affirms they 
were, at Moel Tryfaen (Geol. Journ. vol. xxxvi. p. 355), after such a 
journey and under the foot of such a crushing mass? How could 
the shells from various depths and habitats be brought together just 
at one spot in this fashion? How could they live along shores lined 
with immense masses of ground ice engaged in making boulders and 
boulder-clay ? For most of these shells are not deep-sea species, but 
livedin shallow water. Thus Forbes, speaking of the genera Littorina, 
Purpura, Patella, and Lacuna, says they “ definitely indicate not 
merely shallow water, but in the first three cases a shore-line. .. . 
All the forms of Littorina live only at water-mark or between tides ” 
(id. p. 370). Forbes then goes on to show that the absence of deep- 
sea forms proves that the waters in which these shells lived were 
shallow. ‘‘ We find no traces,” he says, “of the great Oculina prolt- 
fera, still living in the depths of the Zetland Seas and off the coast 
of Norway; nor of the characteristic Turbinolia, Cariophyllee, Celle- 
pore, and smaller corals; nor of the great northern Asteroids, such 
as Primnoa lepadifera and Alcyonium arboreum, which, from their 
gigantic size, being equal in dimensions to small trees, would cer- 
tainly have left some evidence of their existence behind. Instead of 
these, we get an association of species, which, if we proceed suffi- 
ciently far north, we may still find living in the shallows of colder 
seas. . . . So far as I have seen, there is no British case of an up- 
heaved stratum of the glacial formation containing organic remains 
evidently untransported which may not have been formed at a less 
depth than 25 fathoms, and as the Millepora occasionally occurs in 
the deeper beds, to which belong most of the clays and marls, it is 
probable that between 10 and 15 fathoms would more frequently 
approach the truth” (7d. p. 376). How could littoral shells live if the 
coast was lined with an ice-sheet, or if ice existed there on the scale 
that Ross found it in the Antarctic Sea ? 
I might go on with my comments, but I prefer to conclude with 
some observations of Prof. Bonney, who has put this view, as it seems 
to me, hors de combat in some characteristically incisive phrases: 
«« Apart,” he says, “from the difficulties of a glacier thus walking so far 
up-hill, and of shells having escaped utter smashing in this uncom- 
fortable mode of transport, Mr. Belt has forgotten that Wales was a 
centre from which radiated glaciers, and at one time an ice-sheet, 
which surely would have warded off from its own hills the northern 
intruder” (Nature, x.). Again, he says, ‘“‘ Mr. Belt appears to forget 
that shells have been found not only at Moel Tryfaen, but also near 
Llyn Ffynnon-y-gwas, about two miles west of the peaks of Snowdon. 
Does Mr. Belt mean to say that Snowdon could not protect itself in 
the heart of its own domain better than this? If the lake moun- 
tains had an ice-sheet, surely Snowdonia.” “I think it in the highest 
