278 
ICE-GROOVED BOULDERS 
In the discussion which followed the reading of the paper, much 
doubt was thrown on the possibility of such grooves being made while 
the stone was firmly frozen into the ice, but I then ventured to affirm 
that the well-known plasticity of ice would permit any amount of 
motion of the stones held within its grasp, so long as that motion was 
slow and long continued, so that it would be quite possible for a 
boulder, held within and moving along with the ice, to perform a 
partial revolution and become grooved in this curious manner. 
But it is, I think, more probable that such grooves were made when 
the stone formed a part of the solid rock over which the glacier, or 
local ice-mass, passed. If that early surface was uneven, and before 
the first invasion of the ice it would certainly be uneven, the ice 
would accommodate itself to a large extent to the irregularities of the 
rocks, and where there was a little ridge the ice would rise up one 
side, flow over the top, and descend on the other side. Embedded in 
the ice would be numerous fragments of hard rock, and by the 
points of these, frozen into and carried along with the under-surface 
of the ice-sheet, the grooves which pass round the corners of the 
boulders would very commonly be produced. Subsequently, the 
jointed blocks forming the inequality or ridge in question were torn up 
bodily, or removed in other ways, carried along by the ice-mass, and 
left where we now find them. 
A grand mass of stony boulder-clay fringes Cardigan Bay; it is 
* splendidly shown in the Cambrian railway cutting near Harlech, and 
forms a cliff of 30 feet in height at Criccieth. At the latter place I 
was pleased to find a boulder (built into a wall near the School and 
just at the foot of the little hill called Dinas) which showed grooves 
passing round a corner in exactly the same manner as those on the 
basalt boulders exhibited by Dr. Crosskey. The Criccieth bo ulder is 
of Greenstone and measures 21 by 19 by 15 inches. I should imagine 
that such examples of curved grooves cannot be of very rare 
occurrence, although I have not seen them referred to in any books or 
papers on glacial action with which I am acquainted. Perhaps some 
readers of the “ Midland Naturalist” may know of other examples? 
W. Jerome Harrison. 
ANIMAL-LOEE OF SHAKESPEARE’S TIME.* 
A strangely interesting book, the title of which I give below, has 
recently been written by Miss Emma Phipson. It presents in a very 
compact form the references to and descriptions of animals found in 
books of travels and other contemporary literature of the age of 
Elizabeth, as well as of the periods immediately preceding and follow¬ 
ing that age. Looking at this book as a natural history student, 
* “ The Animal-lore of Shakespeare’s time, including Quadrupeds, Reptiles, 
Fish, and Insects.” By Emma Phipson. London; Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. 
