In some cases I have seen fragments of stratified clays and sands, bent in like manner, in the middle of a great mass of till. Mr. Trimmer has suggested, in explanation of such phenomena, the intercalation in the glacial period of large irregular masses of snow or ice between layers of sand and gravel. Some of the cliffs near Behring’s Straits, in which the remains of elephants occur, consist of ice mixed with mud and stones; and Middendorf describes the occurrence in Siberia of masses of ice, found at various depths from the surface after digging through drift. Whenever the intercalation of snow and ice with drift, whether stratified or unstratified, has taken place, the melting of the ice will cause such a failure of support as may give rise to flexures, and sometimes to the most complicated foldings. But in many cases the strata may have been bent and deranged by the mechanical pressure of an advancing glacier, or by the sideway thrust of huge islands of ice running aground against sandbanks; in which case, the position of the beds forming the foundation of the banks may not be at all disturbed by the shock. There are indeed many signs in Scotland of the action of floating ice, as might have been expected where proofs of submergence in the Glacial Period are not wanting. Among these are the occurrence of large erratic blocks, frequently in clusters at or near the tops of hills or ridges, places which may have formed islets or shallows in the sea where floating ice would mostly ground and discharge its cargo on melting. Glaciers or land-ice would, on the contrary, chiefly discharge their cargoes at the bottom of valleys. Traces of an earlier and independent glaciation have also been observed in some regions where the striation, apparently produced by ice proceeding from the north-west, is not explicable by the radiation of land-ice from a central mountainous region.[4] Glaciation of Wales and England.—The mountains of North Wales were recognised, in 1842, by Dr. Buckland, as having been an independent centre of the dispersion of erratics—great glaciers, long since extinct, having radiated from the Snowdonian heights in Carnarvonshire, through seven principal valleys towards as many points of the compass, carrying with them large stony fragments, and grooving the subjacent rocks in as many directions.