Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel | Page 3

mass of
clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the
transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded or
worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed
or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been scraped
together."[3]
The "till" of Scotland is "spread in broad but somewhat ragged sheets"
through the Lowlands, "continuous across wide tracts," while in the
Highland and upland districts it is confined principally to the

valleys.[4]
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 21.
2. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 220.
3. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 111.
4. "Great Ice Age," Geikie, p. 6.]
{p. 4}
"The lowest member is invariably a tough, stony clay, called 'till' or
'hard-pan.' Throughout wide districts stony clay alone occurs."[1]
"It is hard to say whether the till consists more of stones or of clay."[2]
This "till," this first deposit, will be found to be the strangest and most
interesting.
In the second place, although the Drift is found on the earth, it is
unfossiliferous. That is to say, it contains no traces of pre-existent or
contemporaneous life.
This, when we consider it, is an extraordinary fact:
Where on the face of this life-marked earth could such a mass of
material be gathered up, and not contain any evidences of life? It is as if
one were to say that he had collected the detritus of a great city, and
that it showed no marks of man's life or works.
"I would reiterate," says Geikie,[3] "that nearly all the Scotch
shell-bearing beds belong to the very close of the glacial period; only in
one or two places have shells ever been obtained, with certainty, from a
bed in the true till of Scotland. They occur here and there in
bowlder-clay, and underneath bowlder-clay, in maritime districts; but
this clay, as I have shown, is more recent than the till--fact, rests upon
its eroded surface."

"The lower bed of the drift is entirely destitute of organic remains."[4]
Sir Charles Lyell tells us that even the stratified drift is usually devoid
of fossils:
"Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain that over large areas in
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, I might add throughout the northern
hemisphere, on both sides of the Atlantic, the stratified drift of the
glacial period is very commonly devoid of fossils."[5]
[1. "Great Ice Age," Geikie, p. 7.
2. Ibid., p. 9.
3. Ibid., p. 342.
4. Rev. O. Fisher, quoted in "The World before the Deluge," p. 461.
5. "Antiquity of Man," third edition, p. 268.]
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In the next place, this "till" differs from the rest of the Drift in its
exceeding hardness:
"This till is so tough that engineers would much rather excavate the
most obdurate rocks than attempt to remove it from their path. Hard
rocks are more or less easily assailable with gunpowder, and the
numerous joints and fissures by which they are traversed enable the
workmen to wedge them out often in considerable lumps. But till has
neither crack nor joint; it will not blast, and to pick it to pieces is a very
slow and laborious process. Should streaks of sand penetrate it, water
will readily soak through, and large masses will then run or collapse, as
soon as an opening is made into it."
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TILL OVERLAID WITH BOWLDER-CLAY, RIVER STINCHAR. r,
Rock; t, Till; g, Bowlder-Clay; x, Fine Gravel, etc.

The accompanying cut shows the manner in which it is distributed, and
its relations to the other deposits of the Drift.
In this "till" or "hard-pan" are found some strange and characteristic
stones. They are bowlders, not water-worn, not rounded, as by the
action of waves, and yet not angular--for every point and projection has
been ground off. They are not very large, and they differ in this and
other respects from the bowlders found in the other portions of the Drift.
These stones in the "till" are always striated--that is, cut by deep lines
or grooves, usually running lengthwise, or parallel to their longest
diameter. The cut on the following page represents one of them.
{p. 6}
Above this clay is a deposit resembling it, and yet differing from it,
called the "bowlder-clay." This is not so tough or hard. The bowlders in
it are larger and more angular-sometimes they are of immense size; one
at
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SCRATCHED STONE (BLACK SHALE), FROM THE TILL.
Bradford, Massachusetts, is estimated to weigh 4,500,000 pounds.
Many on Cape Cod are twenty feet in diameter. One at Whitingham,
Vermont, is forty-three feet long by thirty feet high, or 40,000 cubic
feet in bulk. In some
{p. 7}
cases no rocks of the same material are found within two hundred
miles.[1]
These two formations--the "till" and the "bowlder-clay"--sometimes
pass into each other by insensible degrees. At other times