the air which, afterward descending, constituted these world-cloaks of frozen water.
It is, perhaps, easy to suppose that such world-cloaks might have existed; we can imagine the water of the seas falling on the continents, and freezing as it fell, until, in the course of ages, it constituted such gigantic ice-sheets; but something more than this is needed. This does not account for these hundreds of feet of clay, bowlders, and gravel.
But it is supposed that these were torn from the surface of the rocks by the pressure of the ice-sheet moving southward. But what would make it move southward? We know that some of our mountains are covered to-day with immense sheets of ice, hundreds and thousands of feet in thickness. Do these descend upon the flat country? No; they lie there and melt, and are renewed, kept in equipoise by the contending forces of heat and cold.
Why should the ice-sheet move southward? Because, say the "glacialists," the lands of the northern parts of Europe and America were then elevated fifteen hundred feet higher than at present, and this gave the ice a sufficient descent. But what became of that elevation afterward? Why, it went down again. It had accommodatingly performed its function, and then the land resumed its old place!
But did the land rise up in this extraordinary fashion? Croll says:
"The greater elevation of the land (in the Ice period) is simply assumed as an hypothesis to account for the cold. The facts of geology, however, are fast establishing the opposite conclusion, viz., that when the country was covered with ice, the land stood in relation to the sea at a lower level than at present, and that the continental periods or times, when the land stood in relation to the
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sea at a higher level than now, were the warm inter-glacial periods, when the country was free of snow and ice, And a mild and equable condition of climate prevailed. This is the conclusion toward which we are being led by the more recent revelations of surface-geology, and also by certain facts connected with the geographical distribution of plants and animals during the Glacial epoch."[1]
H. B. Norton says:
"When we come to study the cause of these phenomena, we find many perplexing and contradictory theories in the field. A favorite one is that of vertical elevation. But it seems impossible to admit that the circle inclosed within the parallel of 40°--some seven thousand miles in diameter--could have been elevated to such a height as to produce this remarkable result. This would be a supposition hard to reconcile with the present proportion of land and water on the surface of the globe and with the phenomena of terrestrial contraction and gravitation."[2]
We have seen that the surface-rocks underneath the Drift are scored and grooved by some external force. Now we find that these markings do not all run in the same direction; on the contrary, they cross each other in an extraordinary manner. The cut on the following page illustrates this.
If the direction of the motion of the ice-sheets, which caused these markings, was,--as the glacialists allege,--always from the elevated region in the north to the lower ground in the south, then the markings must always have been in the same direction: given a fixed cause, we must have always a fixed result. We shall see, as we go on in this argument, that the deposition of the "till" was instantaneous; and, as these markings were made before or at the same time the "till" was laid down, how could the land
[1. "Climate and Time," p. 391.
2. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1879, p. 833.]
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possibly have bobbed up and down, now here, now there, so that the elevation from which the ice-sheet descended
###
SKETCH OF GLACIER-FURROWS AND SCRATCHES AT STONY POINT, LAKE ERIE, MICHIGAN.
aa, deep water-line; bb border of the bank of earthy materials; cc, deep parallel grooves four and a half feet apart and twenty-five feet long, bearing north 60° east; d, a set of grooves and scratches bearing north 60° west; e, a natural bridge.
[Winchell's "Sketches of Creation," p. 213.]
was one moment in the northeast, and the next moment had whirled away into the northwest? As the poet says:
" … Will these trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy steps
And skip, when thou point'st out?"
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But if the point of elevation was whisked away from east to west, how could an ice-sheet a mile thick instantaneously adapt itself to the change? For all these markings took place in the interval between the time when the external force, whatever it was, struck the rocks, and the time when a sufficient body of "till" had been laid down to shield the rocks and prevent further wear and tear. Neither is it possible to suppose an ice-sheet, a mile in thickness, moving in two diametrically opposite directions at the same time.
Again: the ice-sheet theory requires an elevation in the north and a descent southwardly; and it is this descent southwardly which is supposed to have given the momentum and movement by which the weight of the superincumbent mass of ice tore up, plowed up, ground up, and smashed up the face of the surface-rocks, and thus formed the Drift and made the striæ.
But, unfortunately, when we come to apply this theory to the facts, we find that it is the north sides of the hills and mountains that are striated, while the south sides have gone scot-free! Surely, if weight and motion made the Drift, then the groovings, caused by weight and motion, must have been more distinct upon a declivity than upon an ascent. The school-boy toils patiently and slowly up the hill with his sled, but when he descends he comes down with railroad-speed, scattering the snow before him in all directions. But here we have a school-boy that tears and scatters things going up-hill, and sneaks down-hill snail-fashion.
"Professor Hitchcock remarks, that Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire, 3,250 feet high, is scarified from top to bottom on its northern side and western side, but not on, the southern."[1]
This state of things is universal in North America.
[1. Dana's "Manual of Geology," p. 537.]
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But let us look at another point:
If the vast deposits of sand, gravel, clay, and bowlders, which are found in Europe and America, were placed there by a great continental ice-sheet, reaching down from the north pole to latitude 35° or 40°; if it was the ice that tore and scraped up the face of the rocks and rolled the stones and striated them, and left them in great sheets and heaps all over the land--then it follows, as a matter of course, that in all the regions equally near the pole, and equally cold in climate, the ice must have formed a similar sheet, and in like manner have torn up the rocks and ground them into gravel and clay. This conclusion is irresistible. If the cold of the north caused the ice, and the ice caused the Drift, then in all the cold north-lands there must have been ice, and consequently there ought to have been Drift. If we can find, therefore, any extensive cold region of the earth where the Drift is not, then we can not escape the conclusion that the cold and the ice did not make the Drift.
Let us see: One of the coldest regions of the earth is Siberia. It is a vast tract reaching to the Arctic Circle; it is the north part of the Continent of Asia; it is intersected by great mountain-ranges. Here, if anywhere, we should find the Drift; here, if anywhere, was the ice-field, "the sea of ice." It is more elevated and more mountainous than the interior of North America where the drift-deposits are extensive; it is nearer the pole than New York and Illinois, covered as these are with hundreds of feet of débris, and yet there is no Drift in Siberia!
I quote from a high authority, and a firm believer in the theory that glaciers or ice-sheets caused the drift; James Geikie says:
"It is remarkable that nowhere in the great plains of Siberia do any traces of glacial action appear to have
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been observed. If cones and mounds of gravel and