The geologist recognises several ways in which materials may be transported on the surface of the earth. They may be cast forth by volcanoes, making their journey by being shot through the air, or by flowing in lava streams; it is always easy at a glance, save in very rare instances, to determine whether fragments have thus been conveyed. Again, the detritus may be moved by the wind; this action is limited; it only affects dust, sand, and very small pebbles, and is easily discriminated. The carriage may be effected by river or marine currents; here, again, the size of the fragments moved is small, and the order of their arrangement distinctly traceable. The fragments may be conveyed by ice rafts; here, too, the observer can usually limit the probabilities he has to consider by ascertaining, as he can generally do, whether the region which he is observing has been below a sea or lake. In a word, the before-mentioned agents of transportation are of somewhat exceptional influence, and in most cases can, as explanations of rock transportation, be readily excluded. When, therefore, the geologist finds a country abundantly covered with sand, pebbles, and boulders arranged in an irregular way, he has generally only to inquire whether the material has been carried by rivers or by glaciers. This discrimination can be quickly and critically effected. In the first place, he notes that rivers only in their torrent sections can carry large fragments of rock, and that in all cases the fragments move down hill. Further, that where deposits are formed, they have more or less the form of alluvial deposits. If now the observations show that the rock waste occupying the surface of any region has been carried up hill and down, across the valleys, particularly if there are here and there traces of frontal moraines, the geologist is entitled to suppose--he may, indeed, be sure--that the carriage has been effected by a glacial sheet. Important corroborative evidence of ice action is generally to be found by inspecting the bed rock below the detritus, which indicates glacial action. Even if it be somewhat decayed, as is apt to be the case where the ice sheet long since passed away, the bed rock is likely to have a warped surface; it is cast into ridges and furrows of a broad, flowing aspect, such as liquid water never produces, which, indeed, can only be created by an ice sheet moving over the surface, cutting its bed in proportion to the hardness of the material. Furthermore, if the bed rock have a firm texture, and be not too much decayed, we almost always find upon it grooves or scratches, channels carved by the stones embedded in the body of the ice, and drawn by its motion over the fixed material. Thus the proof of glacial extension in the last ice epoch is made so clear that accurate maps can be prepared showing the realm of its action. This task is as yet incomplete, although it is already far advanced.