182 
KENDALL : PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
For several more years the new views made but little progress, 
the next light however came from the far West. In 1886 and 
1887 Carvill Lewis came to this country to ascertain A^hether 
the principles that had served to explain the Glacial phenomena 
of X. America were not equally applicable to this country. 
His work was characterised b}^ great haste, and over wide 
areas his observations, often made from the windows of railway 
carriages, were ver}^ superficial, but, such as they were, they con- 
firmed his first impressions based upon the general similarity 
between the American and the British phenomena. What, 
however, gave him an immense advantage in the discussion that 
ensued when he brought his Aaews before the British Association 
was that he was, I believe, the first geologist who ever attempted 
to master the whole bod}^ of British Glacial literature (I am not 
prepared to say that there has been a fourth and perhaps not a 
third). With this wide reading and a personal examination of an 
immense tract of country he could treat the subject on an adequate 
scale, and not as a matter of parishes. The charm of a peculiarly 
gracious manner, added to all these other advantages, secured him 
a sj^mpathetic hearing, and he made a few converts, who after 
the lamented death of this brilliant pioneer carried on the 
propaganda, and while, no doubt, helping the cause b}' the new 
facts they brought to light, and the temerit}" with which they 
assailed the old doctrine, cannot, I fear, be acquitted of the zeal 
that outruns discretion. For the next ten or twelve years, the 
British dissociation meetings were enlivened by debates in which 
downright hard-hitting was -freely indulged on both sides, but 
gradually these lost their piquanc}^ as one after another the 
" submergers " succumbed. 
The chief bone of contention had been the occurrence of 
fragmentary and a few whole shells in the Drift. One side con- 
tended that these were indubitable proofs of marine deposition, 
while the other urged that, if a glacier or ice-sheet moved across 
a portion of the sea floor, shells in a more or less fragmentary 
condition might be dragged forward involved in the sub-glacial 
ground moraine. A priori arguments were advanced against the 
possibility of shells surviving this treatment, and the land-ice 
men were invited to answer the question " Then, can a glacier 
walk uphill ? " 
