296 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



Antarctic Continent. We used also to be told, not so many 

 years ago, that the abysses of ocean must be void of life for 

 various reasons, amongst which one was that the pressure of the 

 water woidd be too great for any living thing to endure. Yet 

 many delicate organisms have been dredged up from depths at 

 which the pressure must certainly be no trifle. Now there seems 

 to be just as little difficulty in believing that these organisms 

 existed in a perfect state at the bottom of the ocean, as that 

 shells imbedded in clay would remain unbroken underneath the 

 pressure of a superincumbent ice-sheet of equal or greater 

 weight. If the ice were in motion, the clay with its included 

 shells might be ploughed out bodily, or be merely crumpled and 

 contorted ; or it might be ridden over with little or no disturb- 

 ance ; or, on the other hand, it might become involved with 

 subglacial cWbris, and be kneaded up and rolled forward — the 

 shells in this case being broken, crushed, and striated, just as 

 we find that the shells in certain areas of till have been. The 

 fate of the fossiliferous beds would, in short, be determined by 

 the rate of flow and degree of pressure exerted by the superin- 

 cumbent quasi-viscous body — the motion of which would be 

 largely controlled by the physical features of the ground across 

 which it crept. 



