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VI.—On the Erratic Boulders and Foreign Stones in the Drift Deposits of Eastern England, and their Lessons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Henry H. Howorth
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Extract

Having already discussed the contents, the distribution, and general facies of the widely-spread deposits of Eastern England, which together make up the series classed as Glacial beds, namely, the Post-Tertiary clays, sands, and gravels which have been supposed to attest an Ice period ; and also set out the reasons why, to myself and perhaps to others, the attribution of the surface-beds to such an origin is irrational and impossible (irrational because the theory involves our overlooking nearly every feature of these beds in order that we may explain one or two difficulties in them; and impossible because, so far as ice can be judged by the tests of ordinary mechanics, it is incapable of performing the kind of work which has been demanded of it by those who explain these beds by the intervention of ice in any form)—I will now turn to one element in the beds which still remains to be examined, namely, the foreign stones.

Type
Original Aricles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , March 1897 , pp. 123 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1897

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References

1 It is well to bear in mind the intimate connection between ice and water-action going on in a glacier. Thus, in summer the runlets of water, which form upon the surface of the ice, gradually form streams which fall down some crevasse through the ice to the bed of the glacier, and, acting with a gyratory motion upon the angular stones and gravel, may produce not only hollows in the floor of the glacier, but also rounded boulders, often of considerable size. These in time find their way down the ice-stream to the terminal moraine of the glacier. Thus it is often difficult to separate the action of ice from that of water in such cases.—Edit.