2G4 It. Chambers, Esq., on Glacial Phenomena 



diate ridgings and other evident marks of a spirality, as well 

 as inequality of pressure, in the direction of the excavating 

 agent. At the bottom, rounded pebbles of the size of a play- 

 ing bowl are sometimes found, objects that have clearly been 

 concerned in the hollowing process. When an English geolo- 

 gist hears generally of circular pits in Scandinavia, he at once 

 thinks of aqueous action ; for limestone cliffs down which 

 water descends in a cascade, are often found so hollowed. 

 The presence of the pebbles at the bottom confirms him in 

 the assimilation. But were he to inspect a real Giant's Pot, 

 he would speedily see that it never could have been associat- 

 ed with a waterfall, and that it has strong characteristic pe- 

 culiarities altogether apart from such honeycombing of cliffs 

 as we find at cascades. Even in the character of the skin or 

 surface of the rock, there is a difference. In short, it is evi- 

 dent that these pots have been fashioned by some plastic sub- 

 stance which has wound round the interior, come out again, 

 and passed on, — a substance, however, so far mixed up or 

 associated with water, as to allow of the loose stones gener- 

 ally to keep at or near the bottom, or at least within the pit. 

 Such a plastic substance, with water continually permeating 

 its body, is the ice of glaciers. It would be difficult, I ap- 

 prehend, to shew that any floating or water-impelled ice 

 could, in its sluggish rigid movement over a sea-bottom, send 

 down a tongue to lick and scoop out so peculiar a hollow in 

 the subjacent rock. Still more difficult would it be for those 

 who regard the whole of the ancient glacial phenomena as 

 submarine, to shew how cascades took place at the bottom of 

 a sea ! If the theory of these gentlemen thus puts on so 

 burlesque an aspect, I must be permitted to say, the blame 

 is their own, for all of these peculiar phenomena have been 

 recognised and described for many years, and yet have been 

 passed over by them as if they did not exist. 



The great defect of the ice-floe theory is, after all, the 

 weakness of the force which it implies. If we look the phe- 

 nomena to be accounted for fully in the face, w r e shall see 

 that a heavy forcible pressure, by a dense yet plastic sub- 

 stance, has been exercised — one which could grind and mould 

 the surface of a large tract of country, variegated by consi- 



