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III.—What must be Explained before the Preservation of Deposits under Till is Explained

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

John Young
Affiliation:
Glasgow University

Extract

As I am one of those who find difficulty in understanding the preservation of stratified deposits beneath the Till, I would like to point out to Mr. J. Geikie that he has not correctly stated the difficulty in his paper (Geol. Mag. Feb. 1878) on “The Preservation of Deposits under Till or Boulder-clay.” The difficulty really lies in the explanation of how the Till itself was deposited: were that clear, the preservation of beds beneath it might be at once intelligible. Admitting the passage of an ice-sheet across the country, admitting further that the Till is the moraine profonde of such an ice-sheet, the accumulation of 100 feet of Till beneath the ice-sheet is a phenomenon which has not been explained, and cannot be passed over as unimportant. A moving mass of ice, 2000 feet thick, seems a formidable agent of erosion; yet where I now write nearly 100 feet of Till intervene between the surface and the Carboniferous rocks, which, where exposed, shows striations having the usual compass bearing for this neighbourhood. The greater portion of the Till hereabouts is derived from the Carboniferous rocks of the district, but numerous boulders of granite, felstone, schist, and of Old Red Sandstone sedimentary and volcanic rocks, show that the ice had brought materials from a wider area. The limits of the Carboniferous series are about twelve miles to the west and northwest of Glasgow, that being the direction whence the ice came. As the ice of a modern glacier pushes the results of erosion before it, we may conclude that the old ice-sheet with a pressure of about 1000 lbs. to the square inch did the same; indeed, Mr. Geikie has already accepted this “idea as to how an ice-sheet would behave,” but without explaining how the alternate exposure and concealment was effected in the presence of very thick Till. It may be said that the ice pushed its moraine profimde before it, but then Hugh Miller's “pavements” have always been referred to as proofs that the ice overrode not displaced the Till already accumulated.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1878

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