Correspondence — Prof, T. Rupert Jones. 575 



sions deposits may have been formed, resting upon the surface of the 

 ice or else upon the ground itself, and in lakes dammed up by 

 the ice ; and currents, rapids, falls of water in and through the 

 ice may tear the sand-and-gi'avel drift and till. 



But the ice-sheet is constantly moving on towards a lower level ; 

 the accumulations or deposits on and in the ice must go along with it 

 downwards and forwards to its termination to be finally heaped up 

 as ridges, Asar, along the course the whole has taken, down to the 

 disappearance of the ice. Some of the asar may have been formed 

 in this way, and while the ice was retreating from a lower level or 

 was melting away ; but undoubtedly others were deposited in a 

 different manner, for instance, as banks heaped up by the sea along 

 ancient coast-lines. (See A. Brdmann, Bidrag till kannedom om 

 Sveriges quartara bildningar, Stockholm, 1868, and Atlas, pp. 84-131 ; 

 see also J. Geikie, The Great Ice Age, London, 1874, pp. 385-397.) 



I cannot feel certain that the theory here advanced is a new one. 

 So many geologists having studied these phenomena, many different 

 interpretations of the subject are sure to have been made ; but if mv 

 recollection serve me well, this may be a new one. But I would not 

 omit to refer here to the theories of C. W. Paijkull, of Mr. A. E. 

 Tornebohm, and of H. v. Post, as well as that of Mr. A. Stoppani, 

 Corso di Geologia, 1873, ii. 1195: " Gli antichi ghiacciai si gettarono 

 attra verso i confluenti, arrestandone le acque, etc." 



EoNNE ON BOKNHOLM, DENMARK, ]\/[ JeSPERSEN 



October 25, 1874. 



WATER SUPPLY AND "DIVINING EODS." 

 Sir, — My friend Dr. S. Palmer, F.S.A., of Newbury, informs me 

 that in sinking a well in " Bussock Camp," at the north end of 

 Snelsmore Common, on an outlier of Tertiary beds, about three miles 

 north of Newbury, Berks, the diggers came upon a bed of fossil 

 Oyster Shells at a depth of forty feet. This fact establishes the 

 existence of the Ostrea band in the bottom bed of the Woolwich and 

 Eeading series further in that particular direction than previously 

 known. 



The search for water proved fruitless at that depth, and the well 

 has been filled in. The " divining rod " had been here used by an 

 " expert," who had the reputation of having been most successful at 

 Sandleford, near Newbury ! And this fact seems to prove a more 

 southern and easterly extension of the ignorance of water-seekers 

 than previously noticed in the remarks on this semi-superstitious and 

 wholly ignorant procedure, either in the " Proceedings of the 

 Bristol Naturalists' Society," new series, vol. i. p. 60, etc., or the 

 Geological Magazine, Vol. IX. p. 528. The case of the erratic 

 " dowser," met with by Mr. J. E. Taylor, on the London Clay in 

 Essex {ibid. p. 576), certainly proves a still further extension of 

 these conceits and impositions. Let us hope, however, that such 

 easterly instances are evanescent outliers or ultimate attenuations of 

 the old senseless practice. T. Eupekt Jones. 



ToBKTowN, Nov. 9, 1874. 



