1895-96.] 293 



James Geikie, who conceded the submergence, but who con- 

 tended that the most important part of the ice age was a land 

 period higher than the present with a great ice cap, which rode 

 over all the smaller channels, and formed a range of ice cliffs 

 beyond the outer Hebrides. Such an ice cap covers the 

 Antarctic continent, but the resemblance does not go so far as to 

 allow us to say that the ice rode over channels, as there seems 

 to be nothing of this kind at the South Pole. In Greenland the 

 ice sheet comes down to the water's edge and sheds off great ice- 

 bergs, which drift out to open sea ; but, as Lieutenant Peary's 

 interesting narrative shows, the ice only reaches the sea in the 

 valleys, and the capes and headlands between stand out black 

 and bare each summer, enabling him to trace the coastline and 

 to separate island from mainland. The late Carvill Williams's 

 theory of the glacial epoch goes further still, and pictures the 

 ice sheet coming down from the north, over the Isle of Man, and 

 carrying up the bed of the Irish Sea to deposit it on Snowdon and, 

 as a terminal moraine, in the Midland counties. And here steps 

 in the microscopist and proposes to settle the whole thing by 

 the test of the foraminifera. Certainly where these are, the 

 deposit is marine, and their not being found is only negative 

 evidence ; but if the universally marine origin of boulder clay be 

 proved it will revolutionise modern theories upon that subject. 

 The President then referred to the careful and minute work 

 required in tracing out the erratic blocks to their parent formation 

 Broad questions of meteorology are well worth working at in 

 order to help to solve such problems as why Greenland should 

 be covered with an ice cap and Siberia quite dry. This seems, 

 so far as has at present been worked out, to be mainly due to 

 the one country being mountainous and causing precipitation 

 of moisture, and to the prevalence of moisture-bearing winds. 

 Physical geography is therefore a necessity to the proper study 

 of these phenomena. The President next touched upon the 

 engrossing subject of botany, and pointed out that, although 

 such work as that done by Stewart, Corry, and Praeger cannot 

 be done over again, very valuable results indeed could be 



