Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE ACTION OF WAVES. 11

mained mingled in the débris which they deposited. This is not the case. The unstratified Drift is unfossiliferous, and where the stratified Drift contains fossils they are the remains of land animals, except in a few low-lying districts near the sea.

I quote :

“ Over the interior of the continent ¢ contains no marine fossils or relics.” *

Geikie says :

“ Not a single trace of any marine organism has yet been detected in true till.” +

Moreover, if the sea-waves made these great deposits, they must haye picked up the material composing them either from the shores of the sea or the beds of streams. And when we consider the vastness of the drift-deposits, extending, as they do, over continents, with a depth of hundreds of feet, it would puzzle us to say where were the sea-beaches or rivers on the globe that could produce such inconceivable quantities of gravel, sand, and clay. The production of gravel is limited to a small marge of the ocean, not usually more than a mile wide, where the waves and the rocks meet. If we suppose the whole shore of the oceans around the northern half of America to be piled up with gravel five hundred feet thick, it would go but a little way to form the immense deposits which stretch from the Arctic Sea to Patagonia.

The stones of the “till” are strangely marked, striated, and scratched, with lines parallel to the longest diameter. No such stones are found in river-beds or on sea-shores.

Geikie says :

“We look in yain for striated stones in the gravel which the surf drives backward and forward on a beach,

* Dana’s “ Text-Book,” p. 220, + “The Great Ice Age,” p, 15.