﻿Correspondence — Mr. D. Mackintosh. 95 



and-lake harriers is a continuation of that of the mounds, and not 

 superinduced. In the above district most of the eskers occur at a 

 distance from river-valleys ; often where there are no streams of 

 water ; and sometimes on the summits of hills. Their magnitude 

 (reaching 150 feet in height) in Shropshire ; the breadth of the 

 barriers, and the depth and size of the inclosed lakes (not to 

 mention the frequent total absence of streams of water) clearly show 

 that their forms were left by the agency that piled them up, or 

 denuded them before their emergence from the sea. So far as I 

 am aware, all English and Irish geologists believe that their 

 curvilinear shape is not owing to atmospheric action. [See Mem. of 

 Irish Geol. Survey, 98, 99, 108, 109, 117, 118.] 



In answer to Mr. Mellard Reade I have only to say that I do not 

 regard the drifts in the neighbourhood of Liverpool as good repi'e- 

 sentations of the general succession one may trace from Carlisle to 

 Church Stretton in Shropshire. Long sea-coast and railway sections 

 between these places (over a distance of about 150 miles) show 

 a persistency in the relative positions of the three drifts, or of two 

 of them where only two are present. The clay left by the sea 

 washing the sand and stones out of the Boulder-clay would not form 

 a Boulder-clay somewhere else on the same horizon, but would give 

 rise to such a stoneless clay as we frequently find imbedded in the 

 great middle sand and gravel formation.^ D. Mackintosh. 



THE TROPICAL FORESTS OF HAMPSHIRE. 



Sir, — In Mr. Gardner's lecture " On the Tropical Forests of 

 Hampshire," in your January Number, he is reported as offering 

 two suggestions in explanation of the occui-rence of the remains 

 of a temperate climate flora intermingled with that of a tropical one 

 in the Lower Bagshot of Hampshire. One of these is an oscilla- 

 tion of climate which for a time left survivors of the previous flora 

 lingering beside the new growth introduced by a change of climate, 

 and the other the existence of a mean annual temperature which 

 permitted the growth of either class of vegetation side by side. 



As I believe both suggestions to be remote from the truth, and as 

 the first of them is contrary to the general evidence afforded by the 

 animal remains of the Eocene period in England, which appear to 

 me to offer the strongest evidence against the existence of a glacial 

 climate in Europe during any part of that period, perhaps you will 

 allow me to offer what I believe to be the true explanation. 



The remains upon which the determinations of this flora have 

 been based are drifted, and not those of a bed in situ like the Coal- 



' For full and accurate information concerning the Post-tertiary deposits of this 

 country I would recommend Mr. H. B. "Woodward's Geology of England and 

 Wales. It is the only geological work in which an account of these deposits has 

 been thoroughly brought up to the present state of discovery. Having gone over the 

 greater part of the ground described in Mr. Woodward's work, and having pre- 

 viously written a work called " Scenery of England and Wales," I may be pardoned 

 for stating that it exhibits more evident signs of great labour and care than any 

 geological book I have read. — D. M. 



