192 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



ice to which they owe their origin, instead of flowing straight 

 out to sea, kept on a S.E. course. In fact it flowed in a direction 

 as near as may be parallel to the trend of the present coast-line. 

 It will be remembered that along the eastern sea-board of Scot- 

 land the ice was deflected from its path and compelled to flow 

 in the same direction. Despite the pressure exerted by the 

 massive sheet that made its way outwards from the Pennine 

 Chain, the English ice could not escape into the basin of the 

 North Sea, and consequently we find stones from Scotland, North- 

 umberland, and Durham plentifully present in boulder-clay all 

 along the eastern maritime districts of England. More than 

 this, when we get as far south as the Humber, and follow the 

 spoor of the ice as indicated by the carry of the boulder-clay 

 stones, we are led across Lincolnshire into the Midland Counties, 

 by Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. The rocks in these 

 districts are too soft as a rule to have preserved any strise, but 

 the general trend of the stones is in the direction I have in- 

 dicated. The North Sea was filled with a massive mer de glace 

 continually advancing in a general S.S.W. direction — the pre- 

 sence of which is distinctly traceable in the remarkable deflec- 

 tion of the glaciation all along the sea-board of Scotland, from 

 Stonehaven southwards. It was simply owing to the superior 

 elevation and extent of the Scottish mountains that the narrow 

 strip of low-lying ground in the eastern maritime districts of 

 that country was not invaded by an alien ice-stream. When we 

 pass into England the hills become lower, and the area of low 

 ground between the hills and the sea increases in breadth. There 

 was thus less and less opposition offered to the southward advance 

 of the North Sea mer de glace as it pressed upon the eastern 

 shores of England, until eventually it overflowed bodily and 

 crept south-west across the Midland tableland on its way to the 

 valley of the Severn and the Bristol Channel. This remarkable 

 glacial invasion is proved not only by the carry of local stones, 

 and stones which have come south from the northern counties 

 and Scotland, but by the appearance in the till at Cornelian 

 Bay and Holderness of boulders of two well-known Norwegian 



