74 H. H. Howorth—Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 
degree improbable that the Vale Royal shells could be brought to 
their present position (more than 1100 feet above the sea) by any 
ice-sheet without the cold being enough to cover all the higher 
ground in Britain with ice, and so protect it.” Again, “ My conten- 
tion was that the enormous force which would be exerted on beds 
scooped out as described and shoved some 1500 feet up-hill for miles 
over broken ground would crush the shells to a far more comminuted 
state than they arenowin” (id. p.85). Mr. A. H. Green adds to these 
arguments that the shell-bearing drift gravels are stratified : ‘I can 
speak,” he says, ‘to those in the neighbourhood of Macclesfield, which 
run up to 1100 feet above the sea, being also very delicately current- 
laminated. I am puzzled to imagine how this structure could be 
obtained, if the gravels were brought to their present position in the 
way Mr. Belt supposes ; indeed, its presence seems to me fatal to his 
hypothesis” (id. p. 105). 
Lastly, as Mr. Macintosh says, “‘ An intimate acquaintance with the 
character of the Moel Tryfaen deposits precludes the idea that all the 
shells, together with the erratic stones, were pushed out of the beds of 
the Irish Sea as far south as Moel Try faen; for, if it were a true explana- 
tion, the shells and erratic stones would have diminished in number 
the higher up they were pushed. But, on the contrary, the shells 
and erratics in the drifts near the sea are fewer in number than on 
Moel Tryfaen. This theory would likewise require to invest the 
land-ice with the power of rounding the pebbles derived from the 
upper part of the hill, and laminating the sand and fine gravel ; for it 
ought to be remembered that though the sand and gravel are, in 
places, much contorted on Moel Tryfaen, the contortion was evidently 
in many instances produced after their accumulation” (Journ. Geol. 
Soc. vol. xxxvii. p. 351). The same experienced geologist again 
says: “The idea of shell fragments having been pushed up-hili 
along with portions of existing sea-beds is opposed by so many facts 
as to render it altogether untenable” (id. vol. xxxvill. p. 199). 
Having decided that ice has had no part in the transport or 
deposit of the Marine Drift, we must now go elsewhere, and we 
naturally turn to the theory which has the support of a large number 
of geologists, and which may be said to be the dominant theory. 
This accepts the beds of marine drift which occur at the height of 
several hundred feet in several localities in England and elsewhere 
as evidence that the land was submerged for a considerable time, at 
least to that depth when the beds were deposited, and thus invokes 
a gigantic oscillation of the earth’s crust to the extent of at least 
1400 feet down and up again, in order to account for these sporadic 
deposits. The actual conclusions based on the premiss are so 
enormous and so striking, that it is well to quote them in the words 
of a typical supporter of the theory, and we can find none better 
for the purpose than Sir Charles Lyell himself. The following 
paragraph occurs in his Antiquity of Man (pp. 384-5) : ‘‘ The submer- 
gence of Wales to the extent of 1400 feet, as proved by glacial 
shells, would require 56,000 years, at the rate of 24 feet per century ; 
but taking Professor Ramsay’s estimate of 80U feet more, that 
