CHAPTER XXVI. 



GLACIAL EPOCH CONTINUED. SUBMERGENCE AND RE- 

 ELEVATION OF LAND, AND FINAL DISAPPEARANCE OF 

 BRITISH GLACIERS. 



IN describing the glacial phenomena, my chief concern 

 in this book is to show the effects produced by ice on 

 the general scenery of the country, and it is therefore 

 unnecessary that I should here attempt to go into all 

 the details of glacial and interglacial episodes, and of 

 minor upheavals and depressions of land, thus seemingly 

 tracing out a chronological series of geological events 

 as clear and precise as any six or eight stages in the 

 succession of the Oolitic subformations. It is enough 

 for me at present to deal with a broader view of the 

 subject. 



Whether or not, before and during the first growth 

 of the glaciers, the British area, by upheaval, was 

 united to the Continent, I do not know, but of this I 

 am certain that, probably during, and certainly after 

 the largest extension of glacier-ice, the land underwent 

 a process of submersion, and while the great glacier was 

 retiring, the diminishing ice, still descending to the sea, 

 deposited moraine rubbish there. In Scotland, marine 

 shells in situ are found at heights somewhat more than 

 500 feet above the level of the sea, and if the whole of 

 Britain were then submerged only to that depth, it must 

 have presented the spectacle of a group of islands. One 

 of these would consist of the mountainous country north 



