SIR HENRY H. HOWORTH, D.C.L.^ F.R.S., OX ICE OR WATER. 217 



claim to the wide extent of reading from authors, not only 

 British but European and American, evinced by the volumes 

 themselves, especially on subjects which have occupied his pen 

 and attention for sixty years, as he himself states. The 

 present volumes are the third part of a trilogy directed against 

 the prevalent errors of geologists according to the views of the 

 author, of which the first is The Mamraotli and the Flood, and 

 the second is the Glacial Nightmare. The third volume of the 

 present work is still in abeyance. 



The author objects, and rightly, to have his views criticised 

 by novices, some of whom "have never seen a glacier," and this 

 being so it is necessary for me to show my credentials for the 

 office of critic and controversialist. 



Like the author, I have for many years been engaged in 

 studying glacial phenomena both at home and abroad. My 

 first lessons on the effects of glaciationin the resiion of vanished 

 glaciers were received under an able master of this subject, the 

 late Professor (afterwards Sir Andrew) Eamsay, amongst the 

 hills and valleys of i^orth Wales. Eamsay afterwards pub- 

 lished a treatise, not mentioned by our author. The Okl Glaciers 

 of North Wales, and afterwards his celebrated paper on "The 

 Glacial Origin of Lakes,"* which, notwithstanding all that has 

 been written on the subject by opponents of his theory, has not, 

 I venture to state, been seriously undermined. 



AVhen carrying out the Geological Survey of Lancashire 

 and Cheshire some years later, 1 carefully studied the drift 

 deposits, which are there developed on a great scale, and are 

 well known to Sir Henry Howorth. The late Mr. Edward 

 Binney had previously been engaged on this work and had 

 classed the divisions of the Drift into Boulder Clay (Till) below 

 and sands and gravels above ; to this series I added the " Upper 

 Boulder Clay," a very important division which our author has 

 (as it seems to me) overlooked or confounded with the Lower 

 Boulder Clay or Till — a source of many errors amongst geologists. 



My next work was amungst the mountains of the Lake 

 District. L"p to this time (1864) glacial phenomena had not 

 been recognised as such in the Lake District, the boulders, 

 roches moutojin^es, and ice- striations having been accounted for 

 on the hypothesis of Buckland's General Deluge in his Reliqidce 

 Diluviance. However, after the knowledge I had gained with 

 Eamsay in North Wales, it was not long before I was able to 

 announce to him that I had observed similar glacial phenomena 



* Qvjxrt. Jov/rn. Geol. Soc, vol. xviii, p. 185. 



p 2 



