part 1] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. lxxix 



material has all been milled clown to a minute state of subdivision 

 before being redeposited ; it commonly contains recognizable shreds 

 and fragments, both large and small, of the pre-existing beds which 

 have gone to the making of it. If our uplands had been covered, 

 before the glaciation, with hill-peat to anything approaching 

 the present extent, and if our lowlands had then exhibited the 

 mixture of forest-growth and swamp which we know to have been 

 a prevalent condition at the beginning of historic times, we ought 

 to find abundant traces of this ancient land-covering among the 

 material gathered together by the ice in its passage over the surface. 

 Loose fragments of wood are widely distributed in the tills of some 

 parts of the northern interior of the United States, 1 presumably 

 betokening the destruction by ice of a forested tract, recalling 

 the course of events in Alaska early in the present century, when 

 the ' dead ice ' of the Malaspina and other glaciers suddenly be- 

 came ' alive ' and spurted forward. 3 But in the British boulder- 

 clays or tills of land-derivation, relics of land-life, other than an 

 extremely rare fragment of bone or tooth of a big animal, are most 

 exceptional. Personally, although I have searched long and care- 

 fully in many parts of the country, all I have found are two or 

 three shreds of peaty material in the lowest boulder-clay of the 

 Yorkshire coast ; probably derived from some pre-existing deposit, 

 as they were associated with shreds of marine deposits also. 3 

 Lately, Dr. C. T. Trechmann 4 has described the occurrence of some 

 relics of the same kind at the base of the drift on the Durham 

 coast. In Scotland, wisps and patches of peaty stuff in boulder- 

 clay have been noted in three or four places only. 5 In Ireland, 

 despite the large tracts of inland drift, I know of no case where 

 the boulder-clay has yielded remains of the old land-life. 



It seeius hardly possible that there would have been this extreme 

 scantiness of organic terrestrial relics in the boulder-clay if the 

 advancing glaciers had impinged upon a forested country ; and 

 other factors also point to a barren, timberless, storm-swept state 

 of the land for some time prior to the glaciation. It is indeed likely 



1 See Frank Leverett, ' The Glacial Formations & Drainage Features of the 

 Erie & Ohio Basins ' U.S. Geol. Surv. Monogr. xli (1902) p. 273 & pi. xiv. 



2 See Alaska references cited previously, p. lxxii. 



3 Q. J. G. S. vol. xl (1884) pp. 313-15 ; and another example, unrecorded. 



4 Q. J. G. S. vol. lxxi (1915) p. 57 ; and vol. lxxv (1919-20) pp. 181-84. 



5 For references and critical notes, see ' The Origin of the British Flora ' by- 

 Clement Beid, F.B.S. London, 1889. 



