Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

CAUSED BY CONTINENTAL ICE-SHEETS? oF

But if the point of elevation was whisked away from east to west, how could an ice-sheet a mile thick instantaneously adapt itself to the change? For all these markings took place in the interval between the time when the external force, whatever it was, struck the rocks, and the time when a sufficient body of “till” had been laid down to shield the rocks and prevent further wear and tear. Neither is it possible to suppose an ice-sheet, a mile in thickness, moving in two diametrically opposite directions at the same time.

Again: the ice-sheet theory requires an elevation in the north and a descent southwardly ; and it is this descent southwardly which is supposed to bave given the momentum and moyement by which the weight of the superincumbent mass of ice tore up, plowed up, ground up, and smashed up the face of the surface-rocks, and thus formed the Drift and made the stric,

But, unfortunately, when we come to apply this theory to the facts, we find that it is the zorth sides of the hills and mountains that are striated, while the south sides have gone scot-free! Surely, if weight and motion made the Drift, then the groovings, caused by weight and motion, must have been more distinct upon a declivity than upon an ascent. The school-boy toils patiently and slowly up the hill with his sled, but when he descends he comes down with railroad-speed, scattering the snow before him in all direetions. But here we have a school-boy that tears and scatters things going wp-hill, and sneaks down-hill snail-fashion.

“Professor Hitchcock remarks, that Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire, 3,250 feet high, is scarified from top to bottom on its northern side and western side, but not on the southern.” *

This state of things is universal in North America.

* Dana's “ Manual of Geology,” p. 537,