334 Correspondence — Prof. J. P. Lesley. 



glaciation), in illustration of which he refers to Siberian rivers now 

 receiving the remains of the extinct mammoth and living reindeer alike. 



Penetrating fissures in the rocks, this material has formed the 

 amorphous Cave-earth of the districts beyond where the moraine has 

 reached ; and the author pointed out that, stalagmite being due to 

 percolation, none could form while the subsoil was thus permanently 

 frozen, which is the reason why the Cave-earth is devoid of it, 

 though always covered by it and sometimes underlain by it, such 

 ■underlay probably showing that the caves where this occurs were 

 not submerged at the commencement of this minor glaciation. 



After giving various reasons which appeared to him to show that 

 the passing away of the minor glaciation took place while Lancashire 

 was still submerged up to an elevation of from 20 to 30 feet, but 

 when the east and south of England was at a somewhat higher level 

 than at present, he described a bed of flattened stones which cover all 

 anterior beds alike in the limestone districts of the south of Lincoln- 

 shire, and some gravel with flattened fragments of hard chalk in 

 North Lincolnshire and Holderness which appear to him to indicate 

 a flooding of the country after the termination of this glaciation. 

 The author then offered some remarks on the co-existence of 

 arboreal vegetation with the land-ice of the first or great glaciation 

 at the time when it uncovered the plateaux of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 appealing for the probability of this to the condition of South 

 America, where the inland ice passes in glaciers to the sea in the 

 Straits of Magellan and adjoining channels through dense forests. 

 He also pointed out that the evidences of the Newer Pliocene period, 

 as traced by him, lend no support to the climate-theories of Dr. 

 Croll, Mr. Wallace, or Mr. Murphy, but, on the contrary, conflict 

 with them, as do the respective extensions of the areas of glaciation 

 in Western Europe and Eastern America, while they are equally 

 repugnant to any theory of climate based on changes in geographical 

 conditions ; and he concluded by insisting on the British origin of 

 all the ice connected with either glaciation in England, and on the 

 existence of an open north sea throughout. 



coi^iaiEsi^on^rnDiEisrciE:. 



J. p. LESLEY ON HIGH-LEVEL DRIFT. 



SiK, — I notice the following on page 186, No. 214, Geological 

 Magazine : — " The author [D. Mackintosh, Esq., F.G.S., paper 

 entitled, "Additional Discoveries of High-level Marine Drifts, etc."] 

 begins with remarks on the importance of the marine drift-area, . . . 

 especially as regards its great extent, and the absence, so far as yet 

 known, of similar high-level drifts (between 1000 and 1350 feet 

 above the sea) in Continental Europe, Asia, or North America." 



The annual reports published by Professor Geo. H. Cook, State 

 Geologist, give the information which Mr. Mackintosh finds wanting. 

 The vignette to the pamphlet report of 1877 is a Map of the State, 

 showing its northern part wholly covered with drift. The line of 

 the terminal moraine is drawn, and lists of striee with magnetic 

 directions. These tables are continued in the report of 1878, and 



