Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
"The disposition of the striæ is equally conclusive, for we find that on
a stepped escarpment of limestone both the horizontal and the vertical
faces are striated continuously and obliquely from the one on to the
other, showing that the ice had a power of accommodating itself to the
surface over which it passed that could not be displayed by floating ice.
There is a remarkable fact concerning the distribution of boulders on
this island which would strike the most superficial observers, namely,
that foreign rocks are confined to the low grounds. It might be argued
that the local ice always retained its individuality, and so kept the
foreign ice with its characteristic boulders at bay. But, apart from
the _a priori_ improbability of so small a hill-cluster achieving what
the Lake District could not accomplish, the fact that Snae Fell, an
isolated _conical_ hill, is swathed in drift from top to bottom, is
quite conclusive that the foreign ice must have got in. Why, then, did
it carry no stones with it? The following suggestion I make not without
misgivings, though there are many facts to which I might appeal that seem
strongly corroborative:
"The hilly axis of the island runs in a general northeast and southwest
direction, and it rises from a great expanse of drift in the north with
singular abruptness, some of the hills being almost inaccessible to a
direct approach without actual climbing. I imagine that the ice which
bore down upon the northern end of the island was, so far as its lower
strata were concerned, unable to ascend so steep an acclivity, and was
cleft, and flowed to right and left. The upper ice, being of ice-sheet
origin, would be relatively clean, and this flowing straight over the
top of the obstruction would glaciate the country with such material as
was lying loose upon the ground or could be dislodged by mere pressure.
It would appear from published descriptions that the Isle of Arran
offers the same problem, and I would suggest the application of the same
solution to it.
"Marine shells occur in the Manx drift, but only in such situations
as were reached by the ice-laden with foreign stones. They present
similar features of association of shells of different habitat, and
perhaps of geological age, to those already referred to as being common
characteristics of the shell-faunas of the drift of the mainland. Four
extinct species of mollusca have been recognised by me in the Manx drift.
"The Manx drift is of great interest as showing, perhaps better than any
locality yet studied, those features of the distribution of boulders of
native rocks which attest so clearly the exclusive action of land-ice.
There are in the island many highly characteristic igneous rocks, and I
have found that boulders of these rocks never occur to the northward of
the parent mass, and very rarely in any direction except to the southwest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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