184 PEOCEEDIFGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Mar. 5, 



upturned edges of the vertical strata there are in many places striated, 

 and show great marks of erosion, as I have already mentioned ; and 

 the interstratified beds of greenstone, which are very numerous, 

 stand out like great Cyclopean walls, running for miles high above 

 the softer slaty beds that have yielded more to the action of the 

 ice. But almost the whole wreck of the strata has been carried off, 

 as if the rocks had been swept bare with a great iron besom. Some 

 of the protruding trap-dykes that attracted the notice of Macculloch 

 in many parts of the Western Isles, and were referred by him, with 

 hesitation, to the tedious operation of the atmosphere, are, I have no 

 doubt, due to this erosion of the softer beds by the ice. 



The geological period to which this great glaeiation of Scotland 

 belongs was probably contemporaneous with the formation of those 

 " subaerial " beds on the borders of the English Chanrel, described by 

 Mr. Godwin- Austen, and referred by him to the time succeeding the 

 Norwich Crag. That, at least, it was not of much older date, I am led 

 to think from the discovery of some patches of what appears to be Red 

 Crag in the low coast- district of Slains, in Aberdeenshire, that have 

 partly escaped the denudation caused by the ice. In addition to the 

 Mollusca recorded at p. 372 of the 16th vol. of the Quart. Journ. of 

 the Geol. Soc, I have since found in these so-called " Crag" beds of 

 Slains what I believe to be fragments of the Voluta Lamberti, Nassa 

 elegans, and Nucula Cohholdice — three shells eminently characteristic 

 of the Crag-period. Nowhere, however, have I found in them any 

 glacially striated stones ; and the absence of these I consider an im- 

 portant fact, showing that glacial action had not then begun in the 

 neighbourhood. 



If this development of land-ice coincided vrith an elevation of a 

 great part of Europe, we may expect to find, to the south of the ice- 

 covered region, traces of contemporaneous freshwater deposits, and 

 remains of the continental fauna that flourished during the long 

 period that the North was covered with ice. The valley of the 

 English Channel and the southern portion of the German Ocean 

 were then probably dry land, and may have been haunted by mam- 

 malia of various kinds, and hence the quantity of Elephants' teeth 

 and bones they contain. To a part of this period probably belongs 

 the " forest-bed " underlying the boulder-clay of the Norfolk coast, 

 and whose tree-stumps are rooted in the Norwich Crag. 



Maech 5, 1862. 



George Eord Copeland, Esq., M.E.C.S., 5 Bay's HiU Villas, Chel- 

 tenham ; William James Dunsford, Esq., 14 Taviton Street, Gordon 

 Square ; Charles Henry Gatty, Esq., E.L.S., Eelbridge Park, East 

 Grinstead, Sussex ; and Alexander Henry Green, Esq., M.A., EeUow 

 of GonviUe and Caius College, Cambridge, were elected Eellows. 



The following communication was read : — 



