292 Apparent objections to the Glacial Theory. 



debacle was at length reduced to tranquillity and equilibrium in the 

 depths of the Southern Ocean ? 



The glacier theory proposed by M. Agassiz, and now supported 

 by Buckland and Lyell, asserts, that the accumulations of debris 

 called " moraines" which occur across the mouths of glens and 

 valleys in the Highlands of Scotland, could only have been there de- 

 posited by melting glaciers, for their position is such, that had water 

 been the agent, which brought down the detritus from the hills, 

 it must inevitably have swept off the fragments before it, instead of 

 heaping them up as barriers across the glens. This reasoning, how- 

 ever, does not appear to be absolutely correct, for the waters which 

 must have accumulated these moraines, were not the rivers and 

 streams of modern times, nor were they the transient out-bursts of 

 lakes from the higher lands ; had they been such, it is no doubt true, 

 that they would have swept away the accumulations of debris from 

 the mouth of every glen through which they descended. But the 

 height at which many of the moraines occur on the sides of the 

 glens, at once proves, that if they were deposited by water, it must 

 have been by water possessing far greater force and volume than 

 any that occurs at present. Now if we allow that the land was 

 once submerged, and the strata horizontal, of which no reasonable 

 doubt can be entertained, it will follow, that when volcanic 

 movements within broke up the strata and upheaved them, the 

 friction of the uprising masses against each other would, in nu- 

 merous instances, have caused precisely the very grooves, striae, and 

 polished surfaces which rocks often exhibit, while the shattered 

 and disrupted surface would have yielded abundantly the debris and 

 boulders of which the supposed moraines are composed, and these 

 hurled together in confusion by the mighty debacle formed by the 

 suddenly uprising land, would have been accumulated in masses of 

 great extent across the openings of the glens and valleys through 

 which the recoiling, and ever and anon returning swell, tumultuously 

 descended. These forming barriers to the quiet streams which at a 

 later period occupied the glens, would have dammed up the waters 

 until their gradually increasing force at length burst over or 

 through the obstacle, and thus modified the form and appearance of 

 the moraines. It may perhaps be objected, that the friction of up- 



