138 W. Theobald — Himalayan Qlaciation, [June, 



Mr. Campbell evidently relies mucli on the weight which should attach 

 to his extended experience and special study of glacial j)henomena, but his 

 remarks show that he has overlooked the most important elements in a 

 comparison between the glaciated districts of Europe and the Himalayan 

 region — viz., the difference in the character of the rocks and the prodigious 

 disparity of denudational action in the two regions. It is true he ap- 

 peals to the latter in the form of floods as the motive power by which 

 the Kangra erratics have been torn from the distant peaks and scattered 

 over the plains, but wholly loses sight of it, when insisting on the absence 

 of striated rocks and other surface indications relied on in Europe to estab- 

 lish the former extension of glaciers. The two arguments are mutually 

 destructive, for a succession of such terrific debacles as could alone have 

 effected the transportation of blocks up to 140 feet in girth, could have 

 had no other effect than to obliterate all traces of the ice plough, on the 

 absence of which Mr. Campbell relies to disprove the extension of the old 

 glaciers. 



Again, from the weight which Mr. Campbell attaches to the absence of 

 striation in the rocks of the Kangra district, it is clear that he has failed to 

 recognise the very obvious fact, that the rock (a granitoid gneiss) which 

 has afforded the main bulk of the Kangra erratics is bjr its mineral charac- 

 ter, incapable of affording the proofs sought for, since under atmospheric 

 action it scales off and weathers into rounded masses which retain scarcely 

 a trace of the original surface, which they possessed as ice-borne fragments. 

 A similar inappreciation of the most obvious physical considerations involved 

 in the problem of the past history and conditions of the rocks he was exam- 

 ining is betrayed by Mr. Campbell's searching the coarse boulder conglo- 

 merates, both of the Sivalik group and its overlying deposits, and the river 

 shingle at Hardwar on the Ganges for striated blocks, where both the con- 

 ditions and materials are such as to afford about as much chance of finding 

 glacial striation on the pebbles (had such ever once existed,) as would be 

 offered to any one searching with a similar object the boulders of the Chesil 

 bank and Portland roads. As regards direct differences of opinion touch- 

 ing the facts of the case, Mr. Campbell says he could discover no * perched' 

 blocks. Mr. Medlicott, who it may be supposed knows a ' perched' block 

 when he sees one, was more fortunate. Equally unable was Mr. Campbell 

 to find even " one hog-backed ridge," the form which I have said distin- 

 guishes the best marked moraines in Kangra. One such is at Dhada, and 

 here Mr. Campbell could see nothing but a V gorge. Now the V gorge is 

 there I admit ; but it is cut out of the huge linear talus, hog-backed in sec- 

 tion, which, I hold, marks the course of an old moraine. It is this Dhada 

 section, as interpreted by Mr. Campbell, which shows that he has wholly 

 failed to grasp my idea of the palseorography of the district. Mr. Camp- 



