The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related SciencesVarious
Science
The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related Sciences
Various
Geology -- Periodicals
down to the bottom and mingled with the subglacial debris. So also
blocks broken away from the base of the prominence which yielded the
englacial erratics might be moved forward along the bottom parallel
with the englacial material above, and lodged at any point along the
line. It is therefore to be expected that the basal deposits will
contain the same rock species as the englacial, but if there be no
process by which the basal material is carried upward the reverse will
not be the case, and there will be a clear distinction between the
englacial deposit and the subglacial deposit, in composition as well as
physical state.
Not a few glacialists, however, advocate in somewhat differing forms
and phases the doctrine that basal material is carried upward into
the body of the glacier and at length reaches the surface, and that
at the extremity of the ice this is commingled with any erratics that
may be englacial or superglacial by original derivation. This doctrine
appears to have had its origin in the endeavor to explain the very
common fact that glacial drift has been carried from lower to higher
altitudes. Erratics are often found lodged several hundred feet higher
than the outcrop from which they were derived. It has never seemed to
me, however, that this phenomenon necessarily was different in kind
from that which takes place in the bottom of every stream; at least I
have not come in contact with any instances that seemed to require a
different explanation, except those connected with kames and eskers
that require a special explanation in any case. We are so accustomed
to view streams from above, and so accustomed to study the extinct
glaciers from the bottom, that we are liable to overlook the community
of some of the simpler processes involved alike in both phenomena. The
dictum that water never runs up hill is measurably true of the surface
currents of the ice as well as water, but it altogether fails when
applied to the basal currents of either. It is probable that there is
no natural stream of any length in which, at some part of its course,
basal debris is not carried from lower to higher altitudes and lodged
there. If the bed of any stream were made dry and the debris in it
critically examined, it would be found that at numerous points the
silts or sands or gravels had been carried from the bottom of some
basin in its bed to the higher rim or bar or reef that bordered it
on the downstream side. So I conceive that, on a grander scale, the
natural result of the flow of the basal ice of a continental glacier
over the inequalities of the country was the lifting of material from
some of the lower horizons and its lodgment on the crests of ridges or
the slopes or summits of mountains that lay athwart its course.
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