In short, it appears as if it were gusts and great whirls of the same material as the “till,” lifted up by the cyclones and mingled with blocks, rocks, bones, sands, fossils, earth, peat, and other matters, picked up with terrible

[1.  “The Great Ice Age,” p. 18.

2.  “American Cyclopædia,” vol. vi, p. 112.]

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force from the face of the earth and poured down pell-mell on top of the first deposit of true “till.”

In England ninety-four per cent of these stones found in this bowlder-clay are “stranger” stones; that is to say, they do not belong to the drainage area in which they are found, but must have been carried there from great distances.

But how about the markings, the striæ, on the face of the surface-rocks below the Drift?  The answer is plain. Débris, moving at the rate of a million miles an hour, would produce just such markings.

Dana says: 

“The sands carried by the winds when passing over rocks sometimes wear them smooth, or cover them with scratches and furrows, as observed by W. P. Blake on granite rocks at the Pass of San Bernardino, in California.  Even quartz was polished and garnets were left projecting upon pedicels of feldspar.  Limestone was so much worn as to look as if the surface had been removed by solution.  Similar effects have been observed by Winchell in the Grand Traverse region, Michigan.  Glass in the windows of houses on Cape Cod sometimes has holes worn through it by the same means.  The hint from nature has led to the use of sand, driven by a blast, with or without steam, for cutting and engraving glass, and even for cutting and carving granite and other hard rocks."[1]

Gratacap describes the rock underneath the “till” as polished and oftentimes lustrous."[2]

But, it may be said, if it be true that débris, driven by a terrible force, could have scratched and dented the rocks, could it have made long, continuous lines and grooves upon them?  But the fact is, the striæ on the face of the rocks covered by the Drift are not continuous;

[1.  Dana’s “Text-Book,” p. 275.

2.  “Popular Science Monthly,” January, 1878, p. 320.]

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they do not indicate a steady and constant pressure, such as would result where a mountainous mass of ice had caught a rock and held it, as it were, in its mighty hand, and, thus holding it steadily, had scored the rocks with it as it moved forward.

“The groove is of irregular depth, its floor rising and falling, as though hitches had occurred when it was first planed, the great chisel meeting resistance, or being thrown up at points along its path."[1]

What other results would follow at once from contact with the comet?

We have seen that, to produce the phenomena of the Glacial age, it was absolutely necessary that it must have been preceded by a period of heat, great enough to vaporize all the streams and lakes and a large part of the ocean.  And we have seen that no mere ice-hypothesis gives us any clew to the cause of this.