S6 Glaciers and Glacial Radiants — Claypole. 
radiated off to the west in which direction its progress was soon 
arrested by deep water of the Atlantic; to the south-west where 
it was reinforced in some degree by the ice from a small radiant 
in Scotland where, says Agassiz, the Grampians were covered 
with a vast thickness of ice whence erratic blocks were dispersed 
in all directions;* to the south where it spread over the low 
flat lands of Denmark, the Netherlands and N. Germany and to 
the east where the flat plains of Russia offered no impediment 
to its flow. 
We may remark in passing though the subject is too large 
for investigation here, that in all probability the ice in this last 
direction terminated in an inland sea of considerable size over 
which the bergs that broke from the ice-foot transported vast 
masses of earth and stones. 
The southward flow above spoken of was greatly strengthened 
by subsidiary but considerable glaciers coming off the mountains 
of northern Germany and France—the Sieben Gebirge, the 
Schwartzwald, the Vosges, &c.—each of which was doubtless a 
glacial radiant. In all probability the supplies coming down 
from these sources so lengthened out the ice-sheet from the 
Scandinavian Cordilleras that it became continuous with that 
which flowed from the great Alpine radiant of Switzerland. 
In this case there was one continuous glacier from the North 
Cape to the valley of the Po, and this may have been still far¬ 
ther extended to the southward by the assistance of smaller 
contributions from the higher ridges of the Apennines in Italy. 
Accepting therefore this picture as that which the facts war¬ 
rant us in drawing we see western and north-western Europe 
during the glacial era nearly buried beneath a vast sheet of ice 
produced by the confluence of a number of distinct glaciers 
flowing down off the higher lands of Norway, Sweden, France, 
Germany and Switzerland. Of its maximum thickness vve can 
form little idea but the indications are that it was not at all in¬ 
ferior to its North American counterpart in this respect. As to 
area the smaller dimensions of its gathering-ground did not 
allow so vast an accumulation of ndve and it did not probably 
*Mr. T. F. J araieson in 1858 adduced a grea r body of additional facts to 
prove that the Grampians once sent down glaciers from the central regions 
toward the sea in all directions. The glacial grooves he says radiate out¬ 
ward from the central hights toward all points of the compass.” Lyell, 
Elements, p. 151. 
