92 
Records of lAe Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. vn. 
would not be an under estimate. If then we make allowanee for the intermingled ice and 
snow, which must have cemented this prodigious mass together, we shall not greatly err if 
we calculate the pressure it must have exerted on the glacier, whereon it rested as equal to 
a stratum of solid granite of one-half that thickness, a force amply sufficient, when applied 
to such a thick stratum of plastic* glacier ice, as we must suppose to have been associated with 
such giant moraines, to have produced a very sensible lateral expansion of the ice river, 
initiative, if no more, of that expansion or lateral deviation, a tendency to which all the 
moraines, more or less, at present display on debouching from the hills. 
Deviation of glaciers. 
That later glaciers have thrust past earlier ones, and intersected their moraines, seems 
scarcely to admit of a doubt, thereby producing an irregu¬ 
larity and confusion in the arrangment of the erratics and 
materials of moraines spread over the country, at first suggestive of the less regular or 
sporadic agency of floating-ice rather than of glaciers, whose frequent inosculation has been 
the real cause of the irregularity in the network of resulting moraines. 
Along the course of the road from Kangra. to Bagiisu numerous illustrations of the 
conditions sketched above present themselves. Long lines 
Kangra to B:t 0 hsu. 0 f nlora j n£ , s are seoll ( 0 s (x,p abruptly and sink out of sight 
beneath the soil; sometimes indicative of the arrest, either temporary or final, of the parent 
glacier, at others of the disruption and truncation of a moraine by a glacier of later date 
pursuing a nearly coincident course. Near Bogli, after passing the temple and tank of 
Gangabarabi, the road skil ls a low ridge, with a well-marked moraine on the right—a long 
string of erratics, whose course is sharply defined; but on turning the end of the ridge, and 
looking towards the village of leb-ki, the country is scon freely overspread with blocks in 
which no regular order can be made out. 
The suggestion of Mr. Medlieott, as to the possible intervention of the agency of 
Floating-ice—no conclusive cvl- floating-ice, in distributing erratics in Kangra, here oe- 
Ueuoe of. earned to me, but I was eventually led to reject the idea, 
from the fact that, as far as my observation goes, these erratics never ascend beyoud a 
certain relative height, which being no greater than that within which the traces of glaciers 
are found, goes far to disprove the intervention of any other agency for the distribution of 
the blocks in question. It is of course obvious that iloating-iee and glaciers could not have 
cotemporaneously occurred over the same area, and the fact that no erratic blocks are known 
in Kangra, beyond the general limits attained by glaciers as fixed by their continuous 
Disproof of its former existence in moraines, is hence almost conclusive disproof of the agency 
Kai, ff |HJ - of (loating-ice within the district. The erratic blocks are 
so marked in character that they could scarcely escape detection, if they occurred beyond the 
limits above assigned to them, and this, for a negative argument, must he allowed unusual 
weight. If then the above conclusion is correct, the more perfect and lineal moraines are 
the youngest, and (trivial atmospheric denudation apart) exhibit the precise appearance they 
did on the waning of the glacial conditions in which they originated, whilst the more 
scattered and dissociated blocks must be regarded as the fragmentary remnants of more 
ancient moraines, whoso continuity has been long since destroyed by surface changes 
wrought by the altered course and direction of glaciers of a later period. 
* Prof. Tyndall very justly combats the idea of iee being regarded as a ‘viscous’ body, properly so-called, 
and would seem to touch the root of the matter, by limiting this so-called viscous quality of ice to a 
capacity of yielding to pressure, not tension, With this cardinal fact established, it is unfortunate that the 
terra ‘plastic’ was not always used in place of * viscous,' as the essential idea of adhesiveness involved in the word 
‘viscid’ or ‘viscous,’ in addition to the mere property of ‘plasticity,’ was not really necessary to the theories of 
hose who usei the term. 
