1855.] RAMSAY — PERMIAN BRECCIA. 199 



river-currents passing out to sea could carry such large fragments from 

 thirty to fifty miles beyond their mouths and scatter them promiscu- 

 ously along an ordinary sea-bottom ; and, 2ndly, if the rivers merely 

 passed from the Longmynd across a lower land to the sea, transporting 

 stones and blocks of various size, these would have been waterworn 

 on their passage seaward after the manner of all far-transported 

 river-gravels, whereas many of the stones are somewhat flat, like 

 slabs, and most of them have their edges but little rounded. Neither 

 could ordinary marine currents move and widely distribute fragments 

 so large that some of them truly deserve the name ol boulders ; and, 

 except in the case of earthquake-waves, which here and there produce 

 an occasional debacle on a shore, I have no faith in violent currents 

 of sea-water (such as have been sometimes assumed to result from 

 imagined sudden great upheavals of land), washing across hundreds 

 or thousands of square miles, and bearing along and scattering vast 

 accumulations of debris far from the parent rocks. This is an 

 assumption without proof. It is also unlikely, and I think impossible, 

 that large debris of this kind could be distributed over so wide an 

 area by the sifting process which Mr. Darwin has shown probably to 

 take place on the east coast of South America, in consequence of 

 movements communicated into deep water during long-continued 

 heavy gales. Neither have they been moved along sea- shores, or 

 subjected to breaker action, like the stones of the Chesil Bank, or of 

 the conglomerate of the Upper New Red Sandstone, all the pebbles 

 of which are true pebbles, spherical or oval, and smoothed by long 

 attrition. 



If, then, they were not distributed by any of these agents, there 

 remains but one other means of transport and distribution — the 

 agency of ice. 



1st. There is in proof, the great size of many of the fragments, — 

 the largest observed weighing (by a rough estimate) from a half to 

 three-quarters of a ton. 



2nd. Their forms. Rounded pebbles are exceedingly rare. They 

 are angular or subangular, and have those flattened sides so peculiarly 

 characteristic of many glacier-fragments in existing moraines, and also 

 of many of the stones of the Pleistocene drifts, and the moraine matter 

 of the Welsh, Highland, Irish, and Vosges glaciers. 



3rd. Many of them are highly polished, and others are grooved 

 and finely striated, like the stones of existing Alpine glaciers, and 

 like those of the ancient glaciers of the Vosges, Wales, Ireland, and 

 the Highlands of Scotland ; or like many stones in the Pleistocene 

 drift. 



It has been said that in any breccia or conglomerate the stones 

 may be scratched. In other ancient breccias I have never observed 

 it ; and I think that in the Permian fragments the experienced eye 

 will have no difliculty in recognizing the peculiar characteristics of 

 glacial scratching. 



By way of contrast, I exhibit some of the pebbles of the upper 

 new red conglomerate. This subformation has been traced over many 

 hundreds of square miles, from Derby to the shores of the Mersey, 



