Amazon stream volume have been turned along the Thames 

 valley it would have powerfully corraded the channel bed 

 and sides, because it would have found a channel which 

 had been formed by a relatively weak stream only. On the 

 other hand, mighty as the Amazon channel was, it had been 

 adjusted to the strength of its own mightiest floods, there- 

 fore its normal stream could only play along that channel. 

 The flood channel tolerated the diminished stream and 

 furnished a disporting ground for it, but it was not moulded 

 by it, but rather the normal stream had to adapt itself to 

 the channel it occupied and lie stagnated here and anon 

 tumble over a rocky ledge, and always exhibit its most 

 pronounced inactivity just where the mighty floods had 

 produced the maximum interruptions of channel base. 



And this is similar to the attitude of some to day, to 

 glacial action. An Ice Flood has never been seen ; that 

 stage has just gone, and the consequently diminished 

 glaciers are adapting themselves to the details of contour 

 of their channels. Here they lie stagnant, anon they yield 

 by crevassing and sluggish flow, anon they avalanche from 

 an upper to a lower glacier. In every case the maximum 

 inactivity is observed at the maximum interruptions of 

 channel base such as at huge fiord basins and cutting curves, 

 that is, where the recent Ice Floods had worked most 

 fiercely. Then men have gone to the Polar regions to 

 study Ice Flood action, but it is simply the case of the 

 normal Amazon and Thames again; the Polar regions are 

 not passing through an Ice Flood stage at present, but they 

 have just passed through such a stage, and the glaciers 

 are now in a condition of diminished volume. 



Still another deduction from these Polar and Alpine 

 pilgrimages which has moved haek the [muds of the clock 

 of geological progress, was that which was based on obser- 

 vations made on glacial motion. As all normal streams 



