554 H. M. Howorth — Traces of a Oreat Post-Olacial Flood. 



by reference to the Glacial Theory ; and the time has come when the 

 question may fairly be asked, whether the pendulum has not swung 

 a great deal too far in one direction, and whether the position of 

 equilibrium demanded by the difficulties of the hour do not demand 

 that it shall swing back again through a considerable arc. I believe 

 that there is only one answer to this question, if we are to progress 

 at all. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not wish to minimize 

 the forces which polished and rounded the surface of so much of 

 Northern Europe, which made the boulders and ground the clay. 

 On the contrary, I believe that they were so important that we have 

 a great deal yet to learn before we shall appreciate them. But, on 

 the other hand, I cannot approach the very critical difficulties 

 presented by the Northern Drift, and its associated deposits, bound 

 hand and foot to a theory which would attribute every peculiarity 

 in the distribution and contents of the loose deposits of Northern 

 Europe to the action of Glacial forces; forces which are characterized 

 by results only explainable when we treat them as intensely 

 destructive, and which are inconsistent with the more conservative 

 results we meet with in various directions. The conclusions which 

 follow, and which seem to me overwhelming, are dictated by a study 

 of the so-called Glacial Beds themselves, and are not mere inferences 

 from what we have seen reason to conclude from other data ; and if 

 they agree with the results of such inference, it only makes the case 

 so much stronger. What is meant by and involved in Glacial con- 

 ditions ? When we speak of certain beds of shells being glacial, of 

 certain gravels and sands being glacial, what meaning do we attach 

 to the words ? The Glacial Period, properly so called, during which 

 the mountains of Scandinavia and Finland, of Scotland and Wales, 

 were rounded and polished and striated, during which the vast 

 streams of boulders of all sizes that are scattered over such districts 

 as Finland and Smaland, and are distributed in more sporadic fashion, 

 over a vast area elsewhere, were rounded and grooved, — a Glacial 

 period when Ice produced results of this kind, and on this scale, can 

 only be matched, if it can be so matched at all, by what is taking place 

 now in the interior of Greenland, or in the basins of the Arctic and 

 Antarctic seas, where gigantic masses of ice are perpetually present, 

 grinding and denuding the surfaces on which they rest, where the 

 whole coast is lined with ice, and every inlet and fiord choked with 

 a glacier — and this over a very wide area. Such a state of things is 

 quite inconsistent with long stretches of beach free from ice, of inlets 

 so free that the most delicate and fragile shells could live freely On 

 their bottoms and along their sides, — is quite inconsistent with such 

 a state of things as prevails now in the seas bathing the Shetlands, 

 the Orkneys, the Faroes and Iceland. We have no glacial conditions 

 at all in these areas, nothing approaching, even qualitatively, what 

 took place during the Glacial Period properly so called. This is a 

 very important fact to remember in the discussion which follows. 

 If by a glacial shell is meant a shell now thriving in that part of the 

 North Atlantic bounded by Iceland, Norway and Caithness, then 

 I say such a description is a complete misnomer and most misleading. 



