Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel | Page 6

its origin to icebergs. If it had been distributed
over the sea-bottom, it would assuredly have shown some kind of
arrangement. When an iceberg drops its rubbish, it stands to reason that
the heavier blocks will reach the bottom first, then the smaller stones,
and lastly the finer ingredients. There is no such assortment visible,
however, in the normal 'till,' but large and small stones are scattered
pretty equally through the clay, which, moreover, is quite
unstratified."[1]
This fact alone disposes of the iceberg theory as an explanation of the
Drift.
Again: whenever deposits are dropped in the sea, they fall uniformly
and cover the surface below with a regular sheet, conforming to the
inequalities of the ground, no thicker in one place than another. But in
the Drift this is not the case. The deposit is thicker in the valleys and
thinner on the hills, sometimes absent altogether on the higher
elevations.
"The true bowlder-clay is spread out over the region under

consideration as a somewhat widely extended and uniform sheet, yet it
may be said to fill up all small valleys and depressions, and to be thin
or absent on ridges or rising grounds."[2]
That is to say, it fell as a snow-storm falls, driven by high winds; or as
a semi-fluid mass might be supposed to fall, draining down from the
elevations and filling up the hollows.
Again: the same difficulty presents itself which we found in the case of
"the waves of transplantation." Where did the material of the Drift
come from? On what sea-shore, in what river-beds, was this
incalculable mass of clay, gravel, and stones found?
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 72.
2. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 112.]
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Again: if we suppose the supply to have existed on the Arctic coasts,
the question comes,
Would the icebergs have carried it over the face of the continents?
Mr. Croll has shown very clearly[1] that the icebergs nowadays usually
sail down into the oceans without a scrap of _débris_ of any kind upon
them.
Again: how could the icebergs have made the continuous scratchings or
striæ, found under the Drift nearly all over the continents of Europe and
America? Why, say the advocates of this theory, the icebergs press
upon the bottom of the sea, and with the stones adhering to their base
they make those striæ.
But two things are necessary to this: First, that there should be a force
great enough to drive the berg over the bottom of the sea when it has
once grounded. We know of no such force. On the contrary, we do
know that wherever a berg grounds it stays until it rocks itself to pieces

or melts away. But, suppose there was such a propelling force, then it is
evident that whenever the iceberg floated clear of the bottom it would
cease to make the strive, and would resume them only when it nearly
stranded again. That is to say, when the water was deep enough for the
berg to float clear of the bottom of the sea, there could be no striæ;
when the water was too shallow, the berg would not float at all, and
there would be no striæ. The berg would mark the rocks only where it
neither floated clear nor stranded. Hence we would find striæ only at a
certain elevation, while the rocks below or above that level would be
free from them. But this is not the case with the drift-markings. They
pass over mountains and down into the deepest valleys; they are
[1. "Climate and Time," p. 282.]
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universal within very large areas; they cover the face of continents and
disappear under the waves of the sea.
It is simply impossible that the Drift was caused by icebergs. I repeat,
when they floated clear of the rocks, of course they would not mark
them; when the water was too shallow to permit them to float at all, and
so move onward, of course they could not mark them. The striations
would occur only when the water was; just deep enough to float the
berg, and not deep enough to raise the berg clear of the rocks; and but a
small part of the bottom of the sea could fulfill these conditions.
Moreover, when the waters were six thousand feet deep in New
England, and four thousand feet deep in Scotland, and over the tops of
the Rocky Mountains, where was the rest of the world, and the life it
contained?
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CHAPTER V.
WAS IT CAUSED BY GLACIERS?
WHAT is a glacier? It is a river of ice, crowded by the weight of
mountain-ice down into some valley, along which it descends by a slow,
almost imperceptible motion, due to a power of the ice, under