806 Apparent objections to the Glacial Theory, 



tion of the valley of the Eden, which would have formed an enormous 

 glacier, whose course, from the conformation of the country, must 

 necessarily have been along the line of the present river, and 

 would therefore not only have intercepted any glacier from the 

 Fells, but would have turned it down the valley likewise. No ac- 

 cumulation of boulders from Shap Fells could ever therefore have 

 reached the escarpments of Stainmore Forest, much less could a 

 glacier have carried them into the valleys of the Greta and the 

 Tees, and had glaciers ever existed in the neighbourhood of the 

 Fells, the transported matter from that locality should now be lying 

 at the embouchure of the Eden, instead of against and beyond the 

 escarpments of Stainmore Forest. 



The only other agent then, that we can produce possessing suffi- 

 cient power to carry the granite blocks into the valleys of the Greta 

 and the Tees, is evidently water, whose rapid and overwhelming 

 rush to the lower levels as the granite of the Fells was suddenly 

 upheaved, would have carried the disrupted fragments across the 

 valley and the uprising hills, and left them in their present situations 

 as its power of transport decreased and its equilibrium was again 

 established. 



It becomes probable, therefore, that neither the agency of icebergs 

 nor of glaciers could have produced the effects apparent upon the sur- 

 face of the earth, but that such are precisely the phenomena which 

 would have resulted from the action of water, for the boulders and 

 debris so plentifully scattered over the countries of the northern 

 hemisphere shew, that while the debacles caused by the sudden rise 

 of portions of the land were thrown back on all sides towards 

 the south, the blocks and fragments of the shattered surface were 

 deposited according to their own specific gravity, and the decreasing 

 power of the retreating waves to carry them. 



Thus erratics would naturally be more numerous in the northern 

 lands, and occur in a decreasing ratio as we travelled southwards, 

 until they ceased altogether, and it is precisely their occurrence in this 

 order which has hitherto led to the inference, that the diluvial cur- 

 rents which deposited them must have passed from north to south. 



I do not, however, mean to assert, that glaciers have had no share 

 in the distribution of blocks over those countries where they still 



