188 Correspondence — Mr. John W. Jiidd. 



" glaciers are able to scoop out vast depressed areas of enormous 

 depth, in their beds." For my own part, I can honestly assure those 

 gentlemen, that I never for one moment dreamt of making any such 

 wild attempt ; nor did I ever lose sight of the fact, that in this 

 indictment of the glaciers for lake-making, the task of substantiating 

 the charge against them rests with those who have advanced it. The 

 verdict for which I contended, and with which I shall be perfectly 

 satisfied, is one of " not proven." 



The manner in which Prof. Eamsay and Mr. Geikie endeavour to 

 obtain a conviction against the glaciers is as follows. They urge 

 that there are certain rock-bound basins of which the formation can 

 be ascribed neither to marine nor to river action, and with regard to 

 which there is a total want of evidence by which their origin can be 

 referred either to special subsidence, to synclinal folding, or to fault- 

 ing of the rocks among which they lie. This premised, they pro- 

 ceed to triumphantly announce their conclusion : — " But one agent 

 is left, and that is ice /" 



Now, it is clear that the whole force of this reasoning depends on 

 the completeness with which the authors of it have cited and dis- 

 posed of the competence, not only of every possible agency, hut also 

 of every possible combination of agencies, by which the lakes in ques- 

 tion could have been formed, except that of ice-excavation. It is just 

 at this point that I venture to join issue with them. 



Just as in the well-known fable, the article was most undoubtedly 

 stolen, though one of the culprits was able to declare that he •' did 

 not take it," and the other that he " had not got it," so there are 

 lake-basins with regard to which it may be very safely asserted 

 that meteoric action could not have excavated them, nor could 

 subterranean forces have moulded them ; but concerning which it is, 

 nevertheless, also true that the two agents, acting in conjunction, are 

 able to give a perfectly good account. 



Prof. Eamsay holds that my line of argument may be '' easily dis- 

 posed of," and Mr. Geikie that it has been "answered already." 

 They will forgive me for reminding them that the only reply that 

 has ever been vouchsafed to it altogether and most signally failed to 

 convince the candid and truth-loving mind of the late Sir Charles 

 Lyell, as every reader of " The Antiquity of Man," and the " Student's 

 Elements of Geology," must be well aware. Dr. Hector, too, in 

 replying to Captain Hutton (who reproduced this '■ answer" of 

 Prof. Eamsay), follows precisely the same line of argument as Lyell — 

 an argument of which the validity and force are admitted by almost 

 every Alpine geologist. What a hapjoy thought then must that 

 have been to the author of " The Great Ice Age," when it occurred 

 to him to carefully avoid all mention of Ly ell's objections to the 

 theory ;— such a discreet, and withal convenient, way of dealing with 

 the question ! 



Far be it from me to rely in this matter on any authority, how- 

 ever eminent, or to cite the opinions of a majority, however over- 

 whelming. But when we are gravely assured that this notion of 

 the erosion of lake-basins by ice "bids fair to become one of the 



