532 
OBJECTIONS TO THE AGENCY OF WATER CONSIDERED. 
glaciers having fronts of such vast dimensions ? How, again, could they have pro- 
duced throughout their course, over undulating countries, the same persistent 
scratches ? How, in a word, could they have moved up-hill throughout such vast 
spaces ? Does not the direction of every modern glacier, even those which ad- 
vance to the sea, differ with the form of the background and of the ridges which 
encase it ? And if so, how is it conceivable that the striae in this part of the world 
should have been made by glaciers properly so called ? So much therefore for the 
glacial terrestrial theory as inapplicable to the low regions of hard Scandinavian 
rocks. 
To the hypothesis, which supposes, that all these phenomena may have been 
produced by water, it is objected, that nowhere in existing nature has a “ vera 
causa ” been found to support it. The advance of ice, say they who oppose the 
action of water, must have produced such scratches and polishings, because we see 
that modern glaciers produce like effects, whilst water, they add, never could with 
any materials which it hurled down, have left such parallel and decisive marks of 
its passage in one direction. In support of this view they appeal to the beds of 
mountain torrents and rivers which have been recently acted on by water and 
pebbles, and not finding any parallel scratchings under such conditions, they reject 
the use of water as a power which could have produced such results. Now before 
we can arrive at just and rational general conclusions, a greater number of data 
must be got together, than those which have yet been collected. It is idle to in- 
terrogate beds of torrents and rivers, where succeeding droughts and frosts destroy 
the ephemeral marks made by the water of the previous season. There can be 
scarcely any analogy between such cases and the effects which we imagine to have 
been produced by drift, which streaming down from the opposite sides of chains 
in the process of elevation, is supposed so to have ground down and furrowed with 
deep scratches the subjacent rocks. Have we yet experimented in any way on 
hard surfaces under such conditions? and if not, ought we to reject all the 
inferences which they involve? If it be impossible that human beings should 
ever be placed in situations to observe such debacles as we think must have 
occurred, when the bottoms of seas were raised into dry lands, let us, at all events, 
institute experiments upon a small scale, which if well-conducted, may enable us 
in some degree to form correct opinions. But may we not considerably extend 
our belief in the transporting power of water, now that the ingenious experiments 
of Mr. Scott Russell on waves of translation, and the mathematical application of 
