384 Glacial Epochs. 



stream coining from what is now the basin of the Clyde, 

 it stretched away south so far that it overflowed 

 Anglesea, and, so to speak, overcame the force of the 

 smaller tributary glaciers that descended from the 

 mountains of North Wales ; for the glacial striations of 

 Anglesea point not to the Snowdonian range, but about 

 25 to 30 east of north, directly toward the mountains 

 of Cumberland. South of Wales, in England, I know 

 of no definite signs of the direct action of glaciers. 



Much of the Lower Boulder-clay is known as ' Till ' 

 in Scotland ; and it was only by slow degrees that geo- 

 logists became reconciled to the idea that this Till is 

 nothing but moraine rubbish on a vast scale, formed 

 by those old glaciers that once covered the northern 

 part of our country. In fact, Agassiz, who held these 

 views, and Buckland who followed him, were something 

 like twenty years before their time ; and men sought to 

 explain the phenomena of this universal glaciation by 

 every method but the true one. Mr. Kobert Chambers 

 was, I think, the first after Agassiz who asserted that 

 Scotland had been nearly covered by glacier ice, and 

 now the subject is being worked out in all its details, 

 thus coming back to the old generalised hypothesis of 

 Agassiz, which is now accepted by many of the best 

 geologists of Europe and America. 



The general result has been that the whole of the 

 regions of Britain mentioned ! have literally been 

 moulded by ice, that is to say, the country in many 

 parts was so much ground by glacier-action, on a conti- 

 nental scale, that though in later times it has been 

 more or less scarred by weather, enough remains of the 

 effects to tell to the observant eye the greatness of the 



1 And equivalent regions in Ireland which in this book it is not 

 my object to describe. 



