VII. On the Aspects of Clydesdale during the Glacial Period

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Abstract
T he author said it was remarkable that some of the most difficult problems of geology should spring up and present themselves within a few feet of the surface on which we stand. After journeying with comparative sureness of footing across the vast spaces represented by the earlier formations, geologists had been arrested for more than a quarter of a century in front of the covering of loose stones, clays, and gravels spread over the whole. He need not recount all the hypotheses by which they had tried to explain what had been variously styled the Northern Drift, Diluvium, Till, or Boulder Clay. It came to be seen that these surface deposits presented a very complex problem, and that no single or transient cause, such as powerful currents, “waves of translation,” or great floods of water, could at all meet the case. By slow degrees, and after a world of labour, they had at length succeeded to some extent in unravelling the mystery of the boulder clays and associated deposits, and so deciphering a very wonderful chapter of the earth’s history, of which these are the record. He then gave an outline of the succession of events which had been made out from the dawn of the glacial epoch down to a comparatively recent geological time,—beginning with the period of land-ice and ending with the “last elevation” of the land. This succession, as now generally concurred in by those who had investigated the subject, was as under:— A period when the

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