76 =H. H. Howorth—Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 
in which the shelly remains occur, a geologist who relied on negative 
evidence might have confidently affirmed that the land had not been 
covered during the formation of the drift by salt water (Antiquity 
of Man, p. 318). But this is looking at the difficulty through the 
wrong end of the telescope, which only minimizes it exceedingly. 
If w+ are to gauge its real proportions, we must go much further 
afield. We must inquire how it is that these drifts with shells are 
not found in the interior of Great Britain, and only in isolated patches 
along the shore. Surely if the land were generally submerged, as is 
generally assumed, even for a comparatively short time only, we 
should find shell-beds in various parts of England, and not merely 
in the Severn Valley and on points near the coast. “Mr. Trimmer, 
who devoted much attention to the superficial accumulations of Eng- 
land, and sought to explain them chiefly by the action of the seas 
and floating-ice, was yet unable to overlook the remarkable fact 
that there is a general absence of marine remains and of regular 
beds of these remains, in what he termed the upper erratics, not only 
in Norfolk, which he had specially studied, but also in every dis- 
trict of England, Wales and Ireland he had examined” (Jamieson, 
Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxx. p. 320). 
In regard to this absence, Mr. Geikie says: ‘If arctic shelly clays 
ever occurred in as thick beds in the inland as in the maritime dis- 
tricts, surely we should have found some notable trace of them. It 
will not do to lay the blame of their disappearance on that geological 
scapegoat denudation. Denudation has not run off with the Kames. 
Why should it have been less considerate with the clays? ‘The 
Kames have come down to us almost, if not quite, in the same state 
as the sea-god left them; but if shelly clays ever existed in the 
interior parts of the country, they would appear to have vanished, 
and left not a wreck behind. If it was in Scotland only where the 
marine shell clays were confined to the maritime districts, there 
might be some excuse for dragging in denudation to account for 
their absence at the higher levels reached by the Kame drift, but in 
Norway and Labrador and Maine the shelly clays are restricted 
precisely as in Scotland to the vicinity of the sea-coast”’ (Grox. Mae. 
Volo TX. p. 28). 
Mr. Reade says: “It is a striking fact that though the whole of 
the Pennine chain has been under water, only at one place, near 
Macclesfield, 1200 feet above the sea, have marine shells been found, 
and those mostly fragmentary. The same with Wales, the same 
with the lake district; these organic evidences of subsidences are 
only sporadic” (Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow, p. 275). 
Another argument has been used effectively by Mr. Belt in the 
following sentence, in which, although he has somewhat minimized 
the proportion of unbroken shells in the drifts, of which a few 
certainly occur, yet the main contention seems to me most just. 
“Where,” he says, ‘‘ was the shore of that mythical sea under which 
England nearly to the Thames is supposed to have been submerged ? 
How is it that not a single undisturbed bed of Glacial shells has 
been found, that nearly all are broken to pieces, that many frag- 
