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IV.—The “Great Submergence” Again: Clava, etc. Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Dugald Bell
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Extract

Last month I glanced at some of the difficulties attaching to the theory of a “ great submergence ” during Glacial times, particularly in connection with the deposition of this shelly clay at Clava.

In regard to the alternative theory of transport by land-ice, the following facts may be enumerated as so far in its favour:-

(a) Evidences of ice-action are conspicuous all over the district. It is a region of intense glaciation, and this special locality is right in the tract of the ancient ice-sheet.

(b) The traces of the movement show that, with a very small submergence, the ice-sheet must have passed over part of a former sea-bottom.

(c) That in this neighbourhood it rose in its progress, carrying numerous boulders with it in its course, and leaving them at higher elevations than their parent beds of rock.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , February 1897 , pp. 63 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1897

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References

page 64 note 1 Q. J. G. S., vol. xxxviii.

page 64 note 2 “Great Ice Age,” 3rd edition, p. 204.—A good example of how materials may be conveyed with very little injury when imbedded in the ice (in whatever way they got there) is furnished by the well-known sad incident of Dr. Hamel's three guides, who lost their lives by being swept by an avalanche into the berg-schrund of the Glacier des Bossons, Mont Blanc, in 1820. In 1861 the glacier, near its lower extremity, gave back the remains of what it had swallowed up forty-one years before. “ Scientific instruments, knapsacks, gloves, etc., were gradually set free from their icy fetters. A gauze veil came out untorn and not much faded; and the knapsack of Pierre Carrier contained a leg of mutton perfectly recognisable!” (See “ Le Mont Blanc, ” by C. Durier, and Main's “ My Home iu the Alps,” p. 68.)

page 65 note 1 Lewis, H. Carvill, “ Glacial Geology of Great Britain,” p. 58.Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 Another matter of complaint which we have against Mr. Smith is in regard to a foolish trick he has of exaggeration. Thus he says; “ In the Clava case the marine material would require to have travelled over ‘hill and dale’ some ten miles.” (See Geol. Mag., 11, 1896, p. 500.) Now, in previous papers it was pointed out that the slope from the level of Loch Ness to Clava is exceedingly gentle; that this is a feature which strikes one from various points of view in the neighbourhood; and that a rise of 500 feet in ten miles, or one in a hundred, is so small as to be practically imperceptible. Those statements no doubt Mr. Smith has read, and he makes a show of having “ regard to facts.” Why, then, does he lay on with the big brush “ over hill and dale ”?Google Scholar