LAMPLUGH: GLACIAL SECTIONS. 
253 
able, with sluggish waters meandering amongst island knolls and 
ridges covered with forest trees or tangled brushwood and reeds — 
a place, indeed, fitly justifying the opinion of a rueful farmer of 
these parts, who roundly holds that “ ’t was never made nor meant 
for aught but a place to shoot wild-duck in, and it’s man’s own fault 
if he wont believe it.” This condition of things I suppose to have 
e xtended up to the historic period. 
This for what it is worth, for I know well enough the danger 
of theorising on too narrow a basis ; and do not profess to have 
carried on a close investigation save in my own immediate neigh- 
bourhood, and therefore state my conclusions subject to the correction 
or confirmation of those whose work and experience are greater than 
mine. But, with this caution, I think no harm can come from this 
tentative statement of a theory which conveniently covers all the 
facts known to me, and I should like to hear if similar explanations 
could be given in other localities whose physical features resemble 
those of this neighbourhood. 
I may mention that in considering the origin of our East York- 
shire Boulder Clays it has seemed to me that the land-ice theory 
only partially succeeds in explaining the facts. Not, indeed, that I 
have any very definite views on the subject, only, in the course of 
my work, I have found myself falling into the habit of thinking or 
speaking of this, or that, as the product of land-ice, without having 
a very clear notion of the properties and capabilities of that curious 
body. 
In fact, now-a-days, an ice-sheet has become a sort of geological 
comfort and one can hardly do without it ; but somehow, in this 
neighbourhood, when I have invoked its aid, it has persisted in 
doing the things it ought not to have done, and leaving undone the 
things it ought to have done in so irritating a manner that I have 
ceased to place much confidence in it. Of course a good glacier 
under perfect control in a high mountainous country is extremely 
serviceable and can be held accountable for much ; but ice-sheets 
sprawling out over great flat plains, like that now occupied, save for 
the little corner of Holderness by the North Sea, seem to do much 
as they like, and refuse to give any reasonable explanation of their 
conduct. 
