in Scotland and Parts of England. 259 



laid, the interior, wherever laid open for road material, 

 shewed of precisely the same character as the stuff constitu- 

 ing the moraines of the Alps. Now, it would be necessary 

 for the exclusive advocates of a drift by floating ice radiating 

 from mountain chains, to shew how there has been such a drift 

 from one side of that of Scandinavia, while there is so little 

 in the opposite direction. They would need to prove that this 

 detrital accumulation in the lee of a mountain chain, is any 

 thing different from the familiar phenomenon of a tail of debris 

 in the lee of a second or third rate hill, or of an isolated rock, 

 and ought not to be set down to the same cause ; namely, the 

 chain having been involved in a flow of ice, in some form, in 

 some circumstances, which pressed hard upon and swept 

 bare the hither side, but, passing with comparative lightness 

 over what lay beyond, left there some of the solid matter with 

 which it was charged. 



It is also to be remarked how little help any such moun- 

 tain chain as that of Scandinavia is really calculated to give 

 us in explaining some of the phenomena. On the shores of 

 the Gulf of Bothnia, and in Finland, where there are vast 

 spaces finely polished, with striation from NW. ; in the 

 country near Stockholm ; in the district between Christiania 

 and Christian sand, and around Gottenburg, where the 

 polished surfaces are equally extensive, but where the stria- 

 tion has a bend towards the south-west ; we are many hun- 

 dreds of miles from that presumed centre of action, and the 

 intervening space presents an infinite number of minor obstruc- 

 tions, all of which, however, have been swept over by the agent, 

 whatever it was. If glaciers proceeding from the plateau be 

 presumed, we should require to know how any such agent 

 descending from hills only half as high as the Swiss Alps 

 could travel over twenty times the space, in a condition, too, 

 necessarily attenuated, through the wideness of the country 

 over which they must have spread. If ice-floes dragging 

 detritus over the surface are presumed, it should be shewn 

 how any such agent could be impelled over the submarine 

 heights and hollows of such an extent of country, everywhere 

 pressing as hard upon the sea-bottom as if its full weight 

 were exercised upon it under subaerial circumstances. 



