ADDENDA. 



625 



nels, and over rocky shoals j — each part of the surface being exposed for 

 centuries, as the country was elevated, to this action ? Would not the 

 fragments of rock embedded in the ice grate in a direct path over the 

 surface, regardless of minor inequalities? and would not the fragments 

 themselves be grooved and scored in one direction ? Can we for one 

 moment believe it possible that boulders, either in water or in the 

 thickest mud, could be driven over a rugged surface, or along a per- 

 pendicular face of solid rock, with such enormous velocity as with their 

 points to groove and scratch it, and nevertheless not to be rolled over and 

 over, like a stone descending a mountain, but to be marked with parallel 

 lines of abrasion, equally with the fixed, underlying mass ? It appears to 

 me that we assuredly can make no such admission. Travellers in the 

 Arctic regions tell us that the drift-ice, with its irresistible power, can 

 force up the gravel and sand into mounds (see Geograph. Journal^ vol. 

 viii., p. 221), and drive before it great boulders, and even ships, and 

 masses of ice, high and dry on the beach. What then would be the effect 

 of a few pebbles, or a single fragment, between such masses of ice and a 

 steep coast-wall of rock ? Would not scratches " horizontal, or nearly so" 

 be formed, " indicating (to use Sir James Hall's words) that grinders had 

 been pressed against the rock;" as if" independently of their gravity" ? 



In this explanation only ver<je causce are introduced, and reasons 

 can be assigned, for the belief that these causes have been in action 

 in these districts. On the theory of debacles, it still remains to be 

 proved that rocks can be thus scooped and furrowed^ or hills scarped ; 

 although I am far from affirming they cannot, — and scratched, I presume, 

 they certainly would be. With respect to Sweden, where the land is 

 now rising, and where ice even still is a transporting agent, it is undoubt- 

 edly the part of the geologist, to endeavour by long and laborious research 

 to account for the phenomena by these real agencies. For to introduce, 

 before it is absolutely forced on us, the hypothesis of a deluge of mud 

 and stones, fifteen hundred feet deep in Sweden, or three thousand in 

 North America, which rushing over the country, rounded the northern 

 fronts of the hills, and rolling by their eastern and western flanks, left them 

 marked with oblique furrows, is to violate, as it appears to me, every rule 

 of inductive philosophy. 



Page 297. 



With reference to the embedment of the Siberian animals with their 

 flesh, I have mentioned in a note, the case of ice described as rising from 

 the bottom of the sea, off the coast of Greenland. Messrs. Dease and 

 Simpson, during their late memorable journey along the shores of the 

 Arctic ocean, speaking of one part {Geograph. Journal, vol. viii., p. 218) 



VOL. III. 2 Q** 



