DR. BUCKLAND AND THE GLACIAL THEORY. 
225 
Szabo's Eine neue Methode die Felspathe auch in Gesteinen zu 
bestimmen. 
Boricky’s Pamphlet on the method of discrimination by the use of 
Hydrofluosilicic Acid. 
(The last four in German.) 
Fouque and Levy’s grand book on Microscopic Petrology “ Les 
Roches Eruptives de la France.” 
DR. BUCKLAND AND THE GLACIAL THEORY. 
The following notes of a discussion that took place at a meeting of 
the Geological Society of London, on November 18th, 1840, were made 
by my father, the late Dr. S. P. Woodward, at that time sub-curator to 
the Society. The discussion followed the reading of the first part of a 
“ Memoir on the Evidences of Glaciers in Scotland and the North of 
England,” by the Rev. Professor Buckland, D.D., Pres. G.S., com¬ 
menced on the 4th of November, resumed and concluded on the 18th 
of the same month.* At the previous meeting Professor Agassiz, 
then of Neuchatel, had communicated his celebrated paper on 
Glaciers, and the evidence of their having once existed in Scotland, 
Ireland, and England; and in explanation of the subject it maybe 
best to quote the following paragraphs from “The Proceedings of the 
Geological Society ” (vol. iii., pp. 332, 333), in which abstracts of these 
Memoirs appeared. H. B. W. 
“ Dr. Buckland’s attention was first directed by Professor Agassiz, 
in October, 1838, to the phsenomena of polished, striated, and furrowed 
surfaces on the south-east slope of the Jura, near Neuchatel, as well as 
to the transport of the erratic boulders on the Jura, as the effects of 
ice ; but it was not until he had devoted some days to the examination 
of actual glaciers in the Alps, that he acquiesced in the correctness of 
Professor Agassiz’s theory relative to Switzerland. On his return to 
Neuchatel from the glaciers of Rosenlaui and Grindelwald he informed 
M. Agassiz that he had noticed in Scotland and England phaenomena 
similar to those he had just examined, but which he had attributed to 
diluvial action ; thus in 1811 he had observed on the head rocks on 
the left side of the gorge of the Tay, near Dunkeld, rounded and 
polished surfaces ; and in 1824, in company with Mr. Lyell, grooves 
and striae on granite rocks near the east base of Ben Nevis. About the 
same time Sir George Mackenzie pointed out to the author in a valley 
near the base of Ben Wyvis, a high ridge of gravel, laid obliquely across, 
in a manner inexplicable by any action of water, but in which, after 
his examination of the effects of glaciers in Switzerland, he recognizes 
the form and condition of a moraine. 
* The reading of a paper on “ The Geological Evidence of the Former 
Existence of Glaciers in Forfarshire,” by Charles Lyell, jun., Esq., F.E.S., etc., 
was commenced at this meeting. 
