Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel | Page 4

upon an unparalleled and continental scale. One writer describes it as,
"A remarkable and stupendous period--a period so startling that it might justly be accepted with hesitation, were not the conception unavoidable before a series of facts as extraordinary as itself."[2]
Remember, then, in the discussions which follow, that if the theories advanced are gigantic, the facts they seek to explain are not less so. We are not dealing with little things. The phenomena are continental, world-wide, globe-embracing.
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 221.
2. Gratacap, "Ice Age," "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1878.]


CHAPTER II.
THE ORIGIN OF THE DRIFT NOT KNOWN.
WHILE several different origins have been assigned for the phenomena known as "the Drift," and while one or two of these have been widely accepted and taught in our schools as established truths, yet it is not too much to say that no one of them meets all the requirements of the case, or is assented to by the profoundest thinkers of our day.
Says one authority:
"The origin of the unstratified drift is a question which has been much controverted."[1]
Louis Figuier says,[2] after considering one of the proposed theories:
"No such hypothesis is sufficient to explain either the cataclysms or the glacial phenomena; and we need not hesitate to confess our ignorance of this strange, this mysterious episode in the history of our globe. . . . Nevertheless, we repeat, no explanation presents itself which can be considered conclusive; and in science we should never be afraid to say, I do not know."
Geikie says:
"Many geologists can not yet be persuaded that till has ever formed and accumulated under ice." [3]
A recent scientific writer, after summing up all the facts and all the arguments, makes this confession:
[1. "American Cyclop?dia," vol. vi, p. 112.
2. "The World before the Deluge," pp. 435, 463.
3. "The Great Ice Age," p. 370.]
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From the foregoing facts, it seems to me that we are justified in concluding:
"1. That however simple and plausible the Lyellian hypothesis may be, or however ingenious the extension or application of it suggested by Dana, it is not sustained by any proof, and the testimony of the rocks seems to be decidedly against it.
"2. Though much may yet be learned from a more extended and careful study of the glacial phenomena of all parts of both hemispheres, the facts already gathered seem to be incompatible with any theory yet advanced which makes the Ice period simply a series of telluric phenomena, and so far strengthens the arguments of those who look to extraneous and cosmical causes for the origin of these phenomena."[1]
The reader will therefore understand that, in advancing into this argument, he is not invading a realm where Science has already set up her walls and bounds and landmarks; but rather he is entering a forum in which a great debate still goes on, amid the clamor of many tongues.
There are four theories by which it has been attempted to explain the Drift.
These are:
I. The action of great waves and floods of water.
II. The action of icebergs.
III. The action of glaciers.
IV. The action of a continental ice-sheet.
We will consider these several theories in their order.
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," July, 1876, p. 290.]
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CHAPTER III.
THE ACTION OF WAVES.
WHEN men began, for the first time, to study the drift deposits, they believed that they found in them the results of the Noachic Deluge; and hence the Drift was called the Diluvium, and the period of time in which it was laid down was entitled the Diluvial age.
It was supposed that--
"Somehow and somewhere in the far north a series of gigantic waves was mysteriously propagated. These waves were supposed to have precipitated themselves upon the land, and then swept madly over mountain and valley alike, carrying along with them a mighty burden of rocks and stones and rubbish. Such deluges were called 'waves of translation.'"[1]
There were many difficulties about this theory:
In the first place, there was no cause assigned for these waves, which must have been great enough to have swept over the tops of high mountains, for the evidences of the Drift age are found three thousand feet above the Baltic, four thousand feet high in the Grampians of Scotland, and six thousand feet high in New England.
In the next place, if this deposit had been swept up from or by the sea, it would contain marks of its origin. The shells of the sea, the bones of fish, the remains of seals and whales, would have been taken up by these great deluges, and carried over the land, and have remained
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 26.]
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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