236 On the Alpine Glacier, Iceberg, [No. 159 



Concluding observations. In reviewing all these deposits I can 

 trace nothing analogous to the true boulder deposit, or to the action 

 of glaciers, in the marks and furrows of the rocks just described. 

 There is nothing which cannot be explained by existing causes, or by 

 the supposition of the action of water during the oscillations which, 

 there can be no doubt, the face of India has undergone. 



The power of the wave of translation is written in large characters of 

 denudation over its entire surface ; or they stand out in bold relief 

 in the bare dykes and naked clustered masses of basaltic greenstone 

 and granite, and also in the harder beds and veins, which we see every 

 where abruptly projecting, like the trap of the Wrekin in Shropshire, 

 from the softer abraded strata around. It is visible in some of 

 the larger gravels, and in the isolated horizontal beds of sand- 

 stone and laterite capping hills separated by denuded vallies and 

 plains. 



To the gentler effects of the waters retiring as the land gradually 

 emerged from beneath, aided by minor oscillations, may be attributed 

 the former wider channels of the rivers — the river terraces, the inland 

 marine clays and sands on the coast of Coromandel, indicating former 

 estuaries, and coast lines and inlets, now dry land ; beds of gravel 

 and loam in the interior ; furrows and rock basins beyond the reach of 

 existing aqueous causes, and ancient marl-bottomed lakes now desic- 

 cated, the existence of which is now only indicated by fossil lacus- 

 trine deposits, for instance, those of Nirmul. 



The agency of floating ice in conveying the granite blocks we see 

 imbedded in the mud and gravel of the east coast of England, from the 

 mountains of Scandinavia across the intervening seas, is now pretty 

 generally admitted. 



One remarkable feature of the boulder formation still remains to be 

 noticed, viz., its extreme rarity in warm latitudes, and its great pre- 

 valence in the cold and temperate regions of both hemispheres. In the 

 northern hemisphere we behold it stretching from the icy regions of Scan- 

 dinavia to about 55°, and overspreading part of North America; and in 

 the Southern world it has been traced, with precisely the same fea- 

 tures as in Europe, in Chili and Patagonia, between 41° South and 

 Cape Horn. 



