268 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



comer of the room — so hard, and beautiful, and polished — originating in the 

 animal matter of a jelly-fish (/), a ton of which creatures would not leave an 

 ounce of solid material. Has the author of the paper ever seen a jelly-fish? 

 Has he ever seen those shoals of " slutter" melting into water and eva- 

 porating on our beaches, without even staining the stones on which they rested? 

 Of all things to form a nucleus— a jelly-fish ! the largest of which, weighing 

 three or four pounds, does not leave as many grains of matter ; and this too, 

 printed under the sanction of a London committee of a London society, mus- 

 tering E.G.Ss, and F.C.Ss, and M.M.Ss, and E.R.A.Ss, with one of the 

 council of the Geological Society as president, and an M.A. as honorary 

 secretary. The only excuse we can make for them is, that they must have left 

 this paper on Sheppey to its fate at the printer's, who, certainly, was not a 

 naturalist, much less a geologist. 



On the Vestiges of Extinct Glaciers in the neighbourhood of Great Britain atid 

 Ireland. By Edwakd Hull, E.G.S. 



In the early part of last year a paper on this subject was read before the Philo- 

 sophical Society of Manchester, by Mr. Edw. Hull, of the Geological Survey. 



"As far back as the year 1821 M. Yenetz first announced his opinion, 

 founded on ample testimony, that the* glaciers of the Alps formerly extended 

 far beyond their present limits. These views were subsequently confirmed by 

 MM. Charpentier and Agassiz, and are now universally received. But it was 

 not until the year 1842 that Dr. Buckland published his reasons for believing 

 that the mountains of Caernarvonshire gave birth to glaciers which descended 

 along seven main valleys ; and that to these agents are to be attributed the 

 polished, fluted and striated rock-surfaces which may be traced at intervals 

 along the pass of Llanberris and elsewhere. This opinion, at first received 

 with incredulity, was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Darwin and Professor 

 Ramsay. 



• " The grounds upon which Dr. Buckland rested his conclusions were pre- 

 cisely those upon which M. Yenetz inferred formed extension of the Alpine 

 glaciers. The effects of these streams of ice moving along their channels have 

 now been repeatedly observed not only in central Europe, but in the Arctic 

 regions, where they descend into the sea and give origin to icebergs. These 

 effects consist in the polishing and moulding the bottoms and sides of the 

 valleys into smooth oval bosses, or roches moutonnees — the production of striae, 

 flntings and scratches (which are generally parallel in a given locality) ; also, 

 perched blocks and moraines. The combination of these phenomena in any 

 region can only be attributed to the agency of glacial ice, as there is no other 

 known power capable of producing them. When to these is added the dispersion 

 of erratic blocks, or boulders of large size, over a district extending many miles 

 from the parent masses to which they may be traced, we cannot hesitate to 

 refer the transportation of these blocks to floating icebergs derived from glaciers 

 in a manner similar to that which is in operation along the coast of Greenland, 

 or amongst the fiords of Tierra del Euego." 



The only British district where, as far as I am aware, a detailed survey of 

 the glacial striae has been accomplished, is that of Snowdon by Professor A. C. 

 Ramsay. The author gives in this paper a short sketch of the glacial vestiges 

 which arc to be found amongst the mountains of Killarney in Ireland, of 

 Caernarvon in North Wales, of the Lake district in England, and the Scottish 

 Highlands. 



Professor Agassiz, in giving a general sketch of the ancient glacial centres 

 of the British Islands, includes amongst them the mountainous district of Kerry, 

 at the southern extremity of Ireland, at the entrance to which are situated the 



