95 
Correspondence — 2fr, D. Mackintosh. 
and-lake harriers is a continuation of that of the mounds, and not 
superinduced. In the above district most of tlie eskers occur at a 
distance from river-vallej T s ; often where there are no streams of 
water ; and sometimes on the summits of Hills. Their magnitude 
(reaching 150 feet in height) in Shropshire ; the breadth of the 
barriers, and the depth and size of the inclosed iakes (not to 
mention the frequent total absence of streams of water) clearly show 
that their forms were left by the agency that piled them up, or 
denuded them before their emergence from the sea. So far as I 
am aware, all English and Irish geologists believe that their 
curvilinear shape is not owing to atmospheric action. [See Mem. of 
Irish Geol. Survey, 98, 99, 108, 109, 117, 118.] 
In answer to Mr. Mellard Reade I have only to say that I do not 
regard the drifts in the neighbourhood of Liverpool as good repre- 
sentations of the general succession one may trace from Carlisle to 
Church Stretton in Shropshire. Long sea-coast and railway sections 
between these places (over a distance of about 150 miles) show 
a persistency in the relative positions of the three drifts, or of two 
of them where only two are present. The clay left by the sea 
washing the sand and stones out of the Boulder-clay xcould not form 
a Boulder-clay somewhere eise on the same horizon, but would give 
rise to such a stoneless clay as we frequently find imbedded in the 
great middle sand and gravel formation. 1 D. Mackintosh. 
THE TROPICAL FORESTS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
Sir, — I n Mr. Gardner’s lecture “ On the Tropical Forests of 
Hampshire,” in your January Number, he is reported as offering 
two suggestions in explanation of the occurrence of the remains 
of a temperate climate flora intermingled with that of a tropical one 
in the Lower Bagshot of Hampshire. One of these is an oscilla- 
tion of climate wliich for a time left survivors of the previous flora 
lingering beside the new growth introduced by a change of climate, 
and the other the existence of a mean aunual temperature which 
permitted the growth of either dass of Vegetation side by side. 
As I believe both suggestions to be remote from the truth, and as 
the first of them is contrary to the general evidence afforded by the 
animal remains of the Eocene period in England, which appear to 
me to offer the strongest evidence against the existence of a glacial 
climate in Europe during any part of that period, perhaps you will 
allow me to offer what I believe to be the true explanation. 
The remains upon which the determinations of this flora have 
been based are drifted, and not those of a bed in situ like the Coal- 
1 For full and accurate Information concerning the Post-tertiary deposits of this 
country I would recommend Mr. H. B. Woodward’s Geology of England and 
Wales. It is the only geological work in which an account of these deposits has 
been thorougblv brought up to the present state of discovery. Having gone over the 
greater part of the ground described in Mr. Woodward’s work, and having pre- 
viously written a work called “ Scenery of England and Wales,” I mav he pardoned 
for stating that it exhibits more evident signs of great labour and care than any 
geological book I have read. — D. M. 
