Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/290

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270
GLACIAL FORMATIONS IN IRELAND.
CHAP. XIV.

precisely resemble hundreds of dome-shaped protuberances in North Wales, Sweden, and North America.[1]

The marks of glaciation on the rocks, and the transportation of erratics from Cumberland to the eastward, have been traced by Professor Phillips over a large part of Yorkshire, extending to a height of 1,500 feet above the sea; and similar northern drift has been observed in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire. It is rare to find marine shells, except at heights of 200 or 300 feet; but a few instances of their occurrence have been noticed, especially of Turritella communis (a gregarious shell), far in the interior, at elevations of 500 feet, and even of 700 in Derbyshire, and some adjacent counties, as I learn from Mr. Binney and Mr. Prestwich.

Such instances are of no small theoretical interest, as enabling us to account for the scattering of large erratic blocks at equal or much greater elevations, over a large part of the northern and midland counties, such as could only have been conveyed to their present sites by floating ice. Of this nature, among others, is a remarkable angular block of syenitic greenstone, four feet and a half by four feet square, and two feet thick, which Mr. Darwin describes as lying on the summit of Ashley Heath, in Staffordshire, 803 feet above the sea, resting on new red sandstone.[2]

Signs of Ice-action and Submergence in Ireland during the Glacial Period.

In Ireland we encounter the same difficulty as in Scotland, in determining how much of the glaciation of the higher mountains should be referred to land glaciers, and how much

  1. Hull, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, July 1860.
  2. Ancient Glaciers of Caernarvonshire, Philosophical Magazine, series 3, xxi. p. 180.