212 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. III. 



torrents, were urged on by subaqueous currents, and large 

 masses transported by ice-floes during the summer season, 

 and deposited on the sea bottom hundreds of miles to the 

 southward. These submarine deposits, covered here and 

 there by erratic boulders dropped by the melted icebergs, 

 were subsequently elevated above the waters, and now con- 

 stitute the vast plains of Russia and other parts of northern 

 Europe ; the transported blocks remaining as durable monu- 

 ments of the physical changes which converted the ocean-bed 

 into dry land.* 



In England there are no tracts covered by boulders of 

 such magnitude as to be comparable with the instances 

 above adduced ; but the same phenomena are observable on 

 a smaller scale, in various districts. Boulders of the 

 granites, porphyries, syenites, and slaty rocks of the 

 Cumberland mountains, are dispersed northward towards 

 Carlisle, southward towards the bay of Morecombe, and 

 eastward to the foot of the Pennine chain. They may be 

 traced from Lancaster " at intervals through the compara- 

 tively low country of Preston and Manchester, lying 

 between the sea and the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills, to 

 the valley of the Trent, the plains of Cheshire and Stafford- 

 shire, and the vale of the Severn, where they occur of 

 considerable magnitude."! The quartz rocks of the Lickey 

 Hills, between Birmingham and Bromsgrove, in Worcester- 

 shire, have yielded immense beds of pebbles, which are 

 thickly spread to the south and east, and even into the 

 valleys of the Evenlode, Cherwell, and Thames, and into 

 the gorge of the chalk downs as far as Reading.! 



* See " Geology of Russia," for a full consideration of the M Scandi- 



navian Drift,*' and the phenomena connected therewith. 



+ Professor John Phillips's " Treatise of Geology." 



% See " A Description of the Quartz Rock of the Lickey Hill in 



Worcestershire, and of the strata immediately surrounding it ;" by the 



Rev. Dr. Buckland.— Geol. Trans, vol. v. r. 50G. This is a masterly 



