Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and FlorasWallace, Alfred Russel
Science
Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Biogeography; Glacial epoch; Island ecology
One of the most constant of all the phenomena of a glaciated country is the
abundance of icebergs produced by the breaking off of the ends of glaciers
which terminate {65} in arms of the sea, or of the terminal face of the
ice-sheet which passes beyond the land into the ocean. In both these cases
abundance of rocks and _debris_, such as form the terminal moraines of
glaciers on land, are carried out to sea and deposited over the sea-bottom
of the area occupied by icebergs. In the case of an ice-sheet it is almost
certain that much of the ground-moraine, consisting of mud and imbedded
stones, similar to that which forms the "till" when deposited on land, will
be carried out to sea with the ice and form a deposit of marine "till" near
the shore.
It has indeed been objected that when an ice-sheet covered an entire
country there would be no moraines, and that rocks or _debris_ are very
rarely seen on icebergs. But during every glacial epoch there will be a
southern limit to the glaciated area, and everywhere near this limit the
mountain-tops will rise far above the ice and deposit on it great masses of
_debris_; and as the ice-sheet spreads, and again as it passes away, this
moraine-forming area will successively occupy the whole country. But even
such an ice-clad country as Greenland is now known to have protruding peaks
and rocky masses which give rise to moraines on its surface;[12] and, as
rocks from Cumberland and Ireland were carried by the ice-sheet to the Isle
of Man, there must have been a very long period during which the ice-sheets
of Britain and Ireland terminated in the ocean and sent off abundance of
rock-laden bergs into the surrounding seas; and the same thing must have
occurred along all the coasts of Northern Europe and Eastern America.
We cannot therefore doubt that throughout the greater part of the duration
of a glacial epoch the seas adjacent to the glaciated countries would
receive continual deposits of large rocks, rock-fragments, and gravel,
similar to the material of modern and ancient moraines, and analogous to
the drift and the numerous travelled blocks which the ice has undoubtedly
scattered broadcast over every glaciated country; and these rocks and
boulders would be imbedded in whatever deposits were then forming, either
from the matter carried down by rivers or from the mud ground off {66} the
rocks and carried out to sea by the glaciers themselves. Moreover, as
icebergs float far beyond the limits of the countries which gave them
birth, these ice-borne materials would be largely imbedded in deposits
forming from the denudation of countries which had never been glaciated, or
from which the ice had already disappeared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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