Prof. A. C. Ramsay on the Glacial Theory of Lake-Basins. 291 



of without examination, and rejected, for all but post-pliocene 

 time, in half a dozen lines, as if indeed, even in a Manual of 

 stratigraphical geology, the older strata exhibited no perplexing 

 phenomena that might induce anything to be said on the sub- 

 ject worth attention. In the case of the Miocene ice-work of 

 the Alps, which, having seen it with Gastaldi, I have long con- 

 sidered to have been proved by him, some persons may con- 

 sider it suggestive that lacustrine phenomena do occur on the 

 flanks of the Alps in the same formation ; and if any of the 

 boulder-conglomerates of the Old Red Sandstone be ice-formed, 

 and Mr. Godwin -Austen's suggestion be true, the conjunction 

 occurs again. " It would, indeed, be the most perplexing of all 

 enigmas/' says Sir Charles, " if we did not find that lake- basins 

 were now, and had been at all times, a normal feature in the phy- 

 siognomy of the earth's surface, since we know that unequal move- 

 ments of upheaval and subsidence are now in progress, and were 

 going on at all former geological epochs." Here again we find 

 the assumption of " lake-basins at all times/' just as if it were a 

 fact familiar to geologists that such lake-basins had always ex- 

 isted, whereas, eliminating lagoons, the statement seems to be 

 only derived from two or three circumstances relating to strata of 

 tertiary times. Traces of estuarine beds are more frequent; but this 

 is another matter altogether. To me the absence of lake-deposits 

 is not at all perplexing, — first, because the preservation of all 

 superficial terrestrial phenomena (as opposed to marine) has 

 been, for obvious reasons, rare in the world's history, except in 

 strata of very late date ; and secondly, because 1 believe that the 

 conditions for the formation of innumerable lakes like those of 

 North America, Scandinavia, the Highlands, the Alps, and other 

 glacier mountain-regions, were probably comparatively rare in 

 the earlier history of the earth. That accidental lakes, due to 

 volcanos, and a few of them perhaps to unequal movements of 

 upheaval and subsidence, may have existed at all times is perhaps 

 certain ; and it would do no harm to my theory were I to concede 

 that all the known and accepted lakes of Miocene and Eocene (?) 

 times, and older ones if they existed, were formed by the pro- 

 cesses to which Sir Charles adheres. 



These preliminary points regarding past times being stated 

 lead, in the ' Elements/ to the special discussion of Sir Charles 

 Lyell's proposition as to what was in his opinion the real cause 

 of the formation of the larger lakes that flank the Alps ; for, 

 except in a vague manner, he does not grapple with the origin 

 of the unnumbered lake-basins that are strewn over the face of 

 such a country as North America. " We need but little reflec- 

 tion," he remarks, " to discover that when changes of level are 

 in progress, some of the principal valleys can hardly fail to be 



