of the Criffel current, underneath which it suddenly plunged at a high
temperature, the line of junction between it and the cold water being
sharply defined, and retaining its position unchanged for a long period
of time! However absurd this conclusion may be, it is forced upon us if
we admit the hypothesis at present under review. For we must remember
that the floating-ice is supposed to have melted whenever it came into
contact with the warm current. The erratics occur up to a certain
boundary-line, where they are concentrated in enormous numbers, and
south of which they do not appear. Here, then, large and small floes
alike must have vanished at once! Certainly a very extraordinary case
of dissolution.
[Y] Mr. Mackintosh says nothing about the "carry" or direction of the
erratics in west and south Wales. Were the paths of these erratics
delineated upon a map, we should find it necessary to suppose that the
wind- or sea-current by which the floating-ice was propelled had flowed
outwards in all directions from the dominant heights!
[Z] It must have likewise flowed in more or less direct opposition
to the current which, in accordance with the iceberg hypothesis,
transported boulders southwards from the high-grounds of south Wales!
If we dismiss the notion of a warm ocean-current for that of a warm
wind, we do not improve our position a whit. Where did the warm wind
come from? Not, certainly, from the ice-laden seas to the east. Are
we to suppose, then, that it flowed in from the south or south-west?
If so, we might well ask how it came to pass that in the immediate
proximity of such a very warm wind as the hypothesis demands, great
snow-fields and glaciers were allowed to exist in Wales? Passing that
objection, we have still to ask how this wind succeeded in melting
large and small masses of floating-ice with such rapidity that it
prevented any of them ever trespassing south of a certain line? It is
obvious that it must have been an exceedingly hot wind; and that, just
as the hypothetical warm ocean-current must have suddenly dived under
the cold water coming from the north, so the hot wind, after passing
over the surface of the sea until it reached a certain more or less
well-defined line, must have risen all at once and flowed vertically
upwards into the cold regions above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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