A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological MonumentsLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
A Manual of Elementary Geology: or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological Monuments
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
A buried forest has been adverted to as underlying the drift on the coast
of Norfolk. At the time when the trees grew there must have been dry land
over a large area, which was afterwards submerged, so as to allow a mass of
stratified and unstratified drift, 200 feet and more in thickness, to be
superimposed. The undermining of the cliffs by the sea in modern times has
enabled us to demonstrate, beyond all doubt, the fact of this
superposition, and that the forest was not formed along the present
coast-line. Its situation implies a subsidence of several hundred feet
since the commencement of the drift period, after which there must have
been an upheaval of the same ground; for the forest bed of Norfolk is now
again so high as to be exposed to view at many points at low water; and
this same upward movement may explain why the _till_, which is conceived
to have been of submarine origin, is now met with far inland, and on
the summit of hills.
The boulder formation of the west of England, observed in Lancashire,
Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, contains in some
places marine shells of recent species, rising to various heights, from 100
to 350 feet above the sea. The erratics have come partly from the mountains
of Cumberland, and partly from those of Scotland.
But it is on the mountains of North Wales that the "Northern drift,"
with its characteristic marine fossils, reaches its greatest altitude.
On Moel Tryfane, near the Menai Straits, Mr. Trimmer met with shells of
the species commonly found in the drift at the height of 1392 feet above
the level of the sea.
It is remarkable that in the same neighbourhood where there is evidence of
so great a submergence of the land during part of the glacial period, we
have also the most decisive proofs yet discovered in the British Isles of
subaerial glaciers. Dr. Buckland published in 1842 his reasons for
believing that the Snowdonian mountains in Caernarvonshire were formerly
covered with glaciers, which radiated from the central heights through the
seven principal valleys of that chain, where striae and flutings are seen
on the polished rocks directed towards as many different points of the
compass. He also described the "moraines" of the ancient glaciers, and the
rounded "bosses" or small flattened domes of polished rock, such as the
action of moving glaciers is known to produce in Switzerland, when gravel,
sand, and boulders, underlying the ice, are forced along over a foundation
of hard stone. Mr. Darwin, and subsequently Prof. Ramsay, have confirmed
Dr. Buckland's views in regard to these Welsh glaciers. Nor indeed was it
to be expected that geologists should discover proofs of icebergs having
abounded in the area now occupied by the British Isles in the Pleistocene
period without sometimes meeting with the signs of contemporaneous glaciers
which covered hills even of moderate elevation between the 50th and 60th
degrees of latitude.
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