Editorial Comment. 181 
Greenland, all appear to be referable to this time of high pre- 
glacial uplift, whose culmination was attended with the en- 
velopment of the northern half of the continent beneath an 
ice-sheet. 
In discussion, Prof. G. F. Wright noted the rapidity with 
which the post-Lafayette erosion would take place if the 
coastal plain rose 2,000 or 3,000 feet higher than now. 
Mr. C. D. Walcott spoke of the wonderfully vast erosion 
in the Colorado region, and showed that it began probably 
after the middle of the Tertiary era. 
Mr. Leverett doubted that high uplifts and plateau climate 
could cause glaciation : to which Mr. Dpham replied that the 
present ice-sheets of Greenland, of the district north of Mt. 
St. Elias, which feeds the Malaspina glacier, and of Norway, 
are on very high areas, and that probably even the Antarctic 
ice-sheet, though circumpolar, could not have been formed if 
that region had been ocean without large tracts of land, a part 
of which is known to comprise high mountains. 
EDITORIAL COMMENT. 
The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood.* 
This is a rather singular book. Its author. Sir Henry H. 
Howorth, has shown great skill in marshalling his facts and in 
presenting them to his readers. He evidences great research 
into the subjects of which the work treats. But we hardly 
think that he will succeed in convincing his fellow geologist - 
of the correctness of his conclusions in regard to the Ice age. 
His title is enough to indicate the tendency of his argument, 
but a few sentences from his preface will more justly show 
his position. 
"I hold that the Glacial theory, as ordinarily taught, is 
based not upon induction hut upon hypotheses some of which 
are incapable of verification while others can be shown to In- 
false. This is why I have called it a -Glacial Nightmare.' I 
utterly deny the possibility of ice having moved over hun- 
*The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, by Sir Henry H. Howorth, 
M. P. Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., London, 1893. 
