Fragments of Earth Lore: Sketches & Addresses Geological and Geographical

Once more, note the manner in which the sub-glacial rock-rubbish, consisting of clay, sand, grit, stones, and boulders, has been amassed. In places where the ice must have moved more or less rapidly, as on considerable slopes, no accumulation took place, while in the rear of projecting crags and knobs of rock, sub-glacial materials often gathered deeply. Again, over low-lying tracts, where the motion of the ice would necessarily be retarded, clay, sand, and stones tended to collect. And this particularly appears to have been the case in those regions where the slow-creeping and gradually thinning ice-sheet approached its terminal line. Hence it is that we encounter such thick and wide-spread sheets of sub-glacial detritus upon the undulating low-grounds and plains of southern Sweden, Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, northern Germany, Poland, and Russia.

The sub-glacial débris to which I specially refer is known as Till or Boulder-clay in this country, as Krosstenslera in Sweden, as Geschiebelehm or Geschiebemergel in Germany, and as Grundmoräne or Moraine profonde in Switzerland. Its general characters are too well known to require more than the briefest summary. In general this peculiar accumulation is an unstratified clay, containing, scattered higgledy-piggledy through it, stones and boulders of all shapes and sizes. Many of these rock-fragments are smoothed and striated, and even the smallest particles, when viewed under the microscope, often show delicate scratches. Frequently, too, the clay is excessively hard and tough, and in many places it shows a kind of pseudo-lamination, which is generally more or less crumpled, and often highly involved. These appearances prove that the clay has not only been subjected to intense pressure, but has actually been rolled over upon itself. I need only refer to the plentiful occurrence of “slickensides” in such clays – the joints by which the clay is often traversed showing such polishing clearly on their faces. These, and many other facts which time forbids me to mention, have received an explanation which has now been generally adopted by European glacialists. The boulder-clay or till is considered by them to represent the ground- or bottom-moraine of glacier-ice. There used to be a notion prevalent amongst geologists in our country that this clay was almost peculiar to these islands. It occurs, however, in most countries of Europe. Vast regions in the north are more or less continuously covered by it, and we meet with it abundantly also upon the low-grounds of Switzerland, from which it may be followed far down the great valley of the Rhone into the sunny plains of France. The lower valleys of the Pyrenees and other Spanish ranges show it well, and it is conspicuous likewise in northern Italy, especially over the low tracts at the mouths of the great lake-valleys. In all those places one can see boulder-clay of as pronounced a character as any to be met with in Scotland.

Danish, Dutch, German, and Russian geologists have of late years devoted much attention to the study of this clay, which is so remarkably developed in their respective countries. It has been long well known that a large proportion of the stones and boulders contained in the till are of northern derivation, but it is only of recent years that we have ascertained the particular routes by which those wanderers or erratics have travelled. The rock-fragments in question have been tracked back, as it were, to their parent masses, and thus, partly in this way, and partly by the evidence of ice-worn surfaces, we have been enabled to follow the spoor of the great northern ice-sheet in a most satisfactory manner. Let one or two examples suffice. Boulders derived from Lapland and Finland occur in the till at St. Petersburg, and have been traced south-east to Moscow. Again, fragments carried from Gottland, in the Baltic, are met with in the boulder-clay of east Prussia, and have been followed south to beyond Berlin. In like manner boulders of well-known Scanian rocks appear in the boulder-clay of Leipzig. So also Swedish and Norwegian rock-fragments are seen in the boulder-clay of Denmark, Hanover, and Holland.

Very wide areas in northern Germany are covered with an almost continuous sheet of glacial detritus, so that it is only occasionally that the underlying rocks crop out at the surface. Striated rock-surfaces are therefore by no means so commonly exposed as in regions like the Lowlands of Scotland. They are not wanting, however, and their evidence is very striking. Thus, in the neighbourhood of Leipzig and Dresden, we find glacial striæ impressed upon certain highly-abraded and ice-worn hillocks of porphyry, the striæ being the work of ice which flowed into Saxony from the north. Similar striæ;, having a general southerly trend, occur at Rüdersdorf, near Berlin, at Gommern, near Magdeburg, at Velpke in Brunswick, at Osnabrück in Hanover, and at other places. Again, we encounter remarkable evidence of the powerful pressure exerted by the ice in the displacement and removal of huge blocks of strata. In Saxony, for example, the Tertiary strata are turned up, pushed out of place, and involved in boulder-clay to such an extent that the brown coals have often been mined for in this strange position. Witness also the extensive displacements and dislocations of the Cretaceous formation in the Danish islands of the Baltic. So great are the contortions and displacements of the Chalk in Moen, that these disturbances were formerly attributed to subterranean action. Along the north-east coast of that island, cliffs 400 feet in height exhibit the Cretaceous beds thrown upon end, twisted, bent, and even inverted, boulder-clay being squeezed into and between the disjointed and ruptured rock-masses.

From a study of these and similar phenomena, it has been demonstrated that during the climax of the Ice Age a very large part of northern Europe was buried under a thick covering of glacier-ice. And it has been conclusively shown that this ice-sheet streamed outwards in all directions from the high-grounds of Scandinavia, for which reason it is often spoken of as the Scandinavian ice-sheet. But as it was fed, not from the snow-fields of Scandinavia alone, but from the precipitation of snow over its whole surface, it is better, I think, to speak of it as the northern ice-sheet. In the extreme north of Scandinavia the ice flowed northward into the Arctic Ocean, while south of the dominant watershed of Lapland and Sweden its course in those high latitudes was east and south-east. It filled up the depressions of the White Sea, the Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic, extending east to the valley of the Petchora and the base of the Ural Mountains, and south-east to Kazan, some 200 miles east of Nijnii-Novgorod. From this point its terminal front trended a little west of south, until it reached the fiftieth parallel of latitude. Undulating a few miles south and north of this parallel, it swept directly west through Russia into Galicia, till it touched the foot-hills of the Carpathian range. After this we follow it along the northern base of the Riesen Gebirge, the Erz Gebirge, and the Harz, and thence westward through Hanover, and into the Low Countries, as far south at least as the mouth of the Rhine. Throughout the vast regions lying west and north of this terminal line, the track followed by the ice has been well ascertained. It was east and south-east in Russia, southerly in east Prussia, south-westerly in Denmark, Hanover, and Holland.

The action of a mass of glacier-ice, reaching a thickness of several thousand feet, must necessarily have resulted in extensive erosion of the rocks over which it passed. Everywhere, therefore, throughout the vast area just indicated, we meet with evidence of severe erosion. But, as one should expect, such erosion is most marked in the hilly regions – in those areas where steep slopes induced more rapid motion of the ice, and where projecting crags and hills opposed the advance of the eroding agent. All such prominent obstructions were energetically assailed – abraded, rounded, worn, and smoothed, or crushed, shattered, dislocated, and displaced. The high-grounds of Scandinavia and Finland, formed for the most part of tough, crystalline rocks, or of more or less durable strata, show everywhere roches moutonnées– smoothed and rounded rocks – while innumerable rock-basins have been scooped out in front of prominent crags and hills. In Denmark and other countries, where less durable rocks prevail, the strata have often been broken and disrupted, and pushed out of place. But as regions formed of such rocks are generally gently-undulating, and seldom show abrupt crags and hills, they oppose few obstructions to the advance of an ice-sheet. When the northern ice-sheet flowed into Russia and Germany, it crept over a low-lying and, for the most part, gently-undulating surface; and although here and there the form of the ground favoured glacial erosion and disruption, and extensive displacements of rock-masses took place, yet, upon the whole the low-lying regions referred to became areas of accumulation. The sub-glacial detritus – ground out or wrenched away from the rough Scandinavian plateau and the uplands of Finland – was dragged on underneath the ice, and spread over the great plains lying to the south-east and south, as the gradually attenuated ice-sheet crawled to its terminal line. My friend Dr. Amund Helland, the well-known Norwegian geologist, has made an estimate of the amount of rock-débris derived from Scandinavia and Finland which lies scattered over the low-grounds of northern Europe. According to him, the area in Denmark, Holland, Germany, and Russia (exclusive of Finland), over which northern detritus is scattered, contains about 2,100,000 square kilometres, and the average thickness of the deposits is about 150 feet, of which, however, only two-thirds, or 100 feet, are of northern origin, the remaining third consisting of local materials. Taking, then, 100 feet as fairly representing the average thickness of the rock-rubbish derived from Finland and Scandinavia, the area of which is given as 800,000 square kilometres, there is enough of this material to raise the general surface of those lands by 255 feet. The same amount of material would suffice to fill up all the numerous lakes of Finland and Sweden sixteen or seventeen times over. Or, if tumbled into the Baltic, it would fill the basin of that sea one and a half times. In short, enough northern rock-débris lies upon the low-grounds of northern Europe, which, were it restored to the countries from which it has been taken, would obliterate all the lake-hollows of Finland and Sweden, raise the level of those lands by 80 feet, and fill up the entire basin of the Baltic, with all its bays. And yet this estimate leaves out of account all the material which the ice-sheet carried away from Norway and the British Islands.

Of the glaciation of our own land I need say very little. The configuration of our country necessarily made it a centre of dispersion during the Ice Age, and the ice which covered Ireland, Scotland, and the major portion of England radiated outwards from the dominant elevations of the land. But as the ice creeping outwards from those centres became confluent, the directions which it followed were often considerably modified, especially upon the low-grounds. We know that the British ice-sheet not only covered the land up to near the tops of our higher mountains, but filled up all our seas and extended into the Atlantic beyond the coasts of Ireland and the Outer Hebrides – these latter islands having been glaciated from the east by the ice that flowed outwards from the mainland. Another point upon which we are now well assured is the fact that the British and Scandinavian ice-sheets coalesced, so that the basin of the North Sea completely brimmed over with glacier-ice.

Finally, then, in contemplating the physical conditions that obtained in northern Europe at the climax of the Ice Age, we have to picture to ourselves the almost total obliteration under a vast ice-sheet of all the land-features of the British Islands, Scandinavia, and Finland, and the adjacent low-lying tracts of Denmark, Holland, Germany, Poland, and Russia. If at that distant date a prehistoric man could have stood on the summit of Snaehatten, he would have seen an apparently interminable plain of snow and ice, bounded only by the visible horizon. Could he have followed the plain southwards in hopes of escaping from it, he would have descended its gently-sloping surface by imperceptible gradations for a distance of 700 miles, before he reached its termination at the foot of the mountains of middle Germany. Or, could he have set out upon an easterly course, he would have crossed the Gulf of Bothnia, buried several thousand feet beneath him, and touched the foot-slopes of the Ural Mountains before he gained the terminal front of the ice-cap, a distance of 1600 miles. On the other hand, had he walked south-west in the direction of Ireland, he would have traversed the area of the North Sea at a height of several thousand feet above its bed, and, crossing the British area, would only have reached the ice-front at a point some 50 miles beyond the coast of Ireland. Here he would have seen the ice-sheet presenting a steep face to the assaults of the Atlantic, and breaking away in massive tabular bergs, like those which are calved by the ice-cap of the Antarctic regions.

I must now pass rapidly in review the facts relating to the glaciation of the mountainous regions which lay outside of the area covered by the northern ice-sheet. The glaciers of the Alps of Switzerland, about which so much has been written, and the study of which first gave Venetz, Charpentier, and Agassiz the clue to the meaning of striated rocks, boulder-clay, and erratics, are, as is well known, the puny descendants of former gigantic ice-flows. At the culmination of the Ice Age all the mountain-valleys of Switzerland and northern Italy were choked with glaciers that streamed out upon the low-grounds. Along the northern slopes of the Alps, as in Bavaria and Würtemberg, these glaciers coalesced to form a considerable ice-sheet, and so likewise did the glaciers that descended from Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiny, into the great valley of the Rhone. Even in north Italy the same was the case with the glaciers that occupied the valleys in which now lie Lakes Orta, Maggiore, Varese, Lugano, and Como – the united ice-flows of those valleys forming a glacier which deployed upon the plains of the Po, with a frontage of not less than 40 miles.

To the north of the Alps, the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest, the Harz, the Erz Gebirge, the Riesen Gebirge, and the Böhmer-Wald – all had their perennial ice and glaciers, although none of those elevated tracts now reaches the snow-line. It was the same with the Carpathians and the Urals, amongst which we meet with relics of much larger ice-streams than any that now exist in the Alps. Considerably further south were the glaciers of the Despoto Dagh of Roumelia. Great glaciers also in former times descended from the Caucasus, and in many hilly regions of Asia Minor indubitable traces of similar large ice-flows have been detected. The high-grounds of central France, and the mountains of Beaujolais and Lyonnais supported considerable glaciers, while from the Pyrenees numerous glaciers of the first class flowed out upon the low-grounds of France, and considerable ice-streams occupied the mountain-valleys on the Spanish side. Other Peninsular chains – the Serra da Estrella, the Sierra Guadarama, and the Sierra Nevada – had likewise their snow-fields and ice-streams. The same was the case with the Apennines and the Apuan Alps of Italy, the traces of former glacial action being conspicuous over a considerable part of Tuscany. Even in Corsica we encounter the same evidence of glaciation – striated rock-surfaces and moraines – which point to the former descent of considerable glaciers from Monte Rotondo.

But rock-striæ and moraines are not the only proofs of former cold and humid conditions having prevailed over middle and southern Europe at the climax of the glacial period. The limestone-breccias of Gibraltar have been described by Professor Ramsay and myself, and we have shown that these could only have been formed under the influence of excessive frost and melting snows. The limestone of the Rock has been broken up along the ridge, and its fragments showered down the slopes, at a time when these were more or less thickly covered with snow. Resting upon and imbedded in this snow, the rock-rubbish would be carried downward and outward during the gradual melting that took place in summer. And in this way immense accumulations of débris were borne forwards over the low-grounds that extended from the base of the Rock into regions which are now partially submerged. Breccias which have probably had a similar origin occur also in Corsica, Malta, and Cyprus, and doubtless they will yet be recognised in many other places. Again, over wide areas in northern France and the south of England, we meet with extensive sheets of earthy clay and rock-rubbish, which have certainly been heaped up under very different conditions of climate than obtain now. This stony earth has evidently travelled down the gentle slopes of the land, under the influence of frost and melting snow, in much the same way as ice-driven rock-rubbish and soil move slowly down the slopes of such dreary regions as Patagonia and certain low-lying tracts within the Arctic Circle.