Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

WAS IT CAUSED BY ICEBERGS? 13

CHAPTER IV. WAS IT CAUSED BY ICEBERGS?

WE come now to a much more reasonable hypothesis, and one not without numerous advocates even to this day, to wit: that the drift-deposits were caused by icebergs floating down in deep water over the sunken land, loaded with débris from the Arctic shores, which they shed as they melted in the warmer seas of the south.

This hypothesis explains the carriage of enormous blocks weighing hundreds of tons from their original site to where they are now found ; but it is open to many unanswerable objections.

In the first place, if the Drift had been deposited under water deep enough to float icebergs, it would present throughout unquestionable evidences of stratification, for the reason that the larger masses of stone would fall more rapidly than the smaller, and would be found at the bottom of the deposit. If, for instance, you were to go to the top of a shot-tower, filled with water, and let loose at the same moment a quantity of cannon-balls, musketballs, pistol-balls, duck-shot, reed-bird shot, and fine sand, all mixed together, the cannon-balls would reach the bottom first, and the other missiles in the order of their size ; and the deposit at the bottom would be found to be regularly stratified, with the sand and the finest shot on top. But nothing of this kind is found in the Drift, especially in the “till” ; clay, sand, gravel, stones,