The Antiquity of Man Part 25

Mr. Aga.s.siz and Dr. Buckland, desirous, like the defenders of the lake theory, to account for the limitation of the shelves to certain glens, and their absence in contiguous glens, where the rocks are of the same composition, and the slope and inclination of the ground very similar, first started the theory that these valleys were once blocked up by enormous glaciers descending from Ben Nevis, giving rise to what are called, in Switzerland and in the Tyrol, glacier-lakes. In corroboration of this view, they contended that the alluvium of Glen Roy, as well as of other parts of Scotland, agrees in character with the moraines of glaciers seen in the Alpine valleys of Switzerland. It will readily be conceded that this hypothesis was preferable to any previous lacustrine theory, by accounting more easily for the temporary existence and entire disappearance of lofty transverse barriers, although the height required for the supposed dams of ice appeared very enormous.

Before the idea of glacier-lakes had been suggested by Aga.s.siz, Mr.

Darwin examined Glen Roy, and came to the opinion that the shelves were formed when the glens were still arms of the sea, and, consequently, that there never were any seaward barriers. According to him, the land emerged during a slow and uniform upward movement, like that now experienced throughout a large part of Sweden and Finland; but there were certain pauses in the upheaving process, at which times the waters of the sea remained stationary for so many centuries as to allow of the acc.u.mulation of an extraordinary quant.i.ty of detrital matter, and the excavation, at many points immediately above the sea-level, of deep notches and bare cliffs in the hard and solid rock.

This theory I adopted in 1841 ("Elements," 2nd edition), as appearing to me less objectionable than any other then proposed. The phenomena most difficult to reconcile with it are, first, the abrupt cessation of the roads at certain points in the different glens; secondly, their unequal number in different valleys connecting with each other, there being three, for example, in Glen Roy, and only one in Glen Spean; thirdly, the precise horizontality of level maintained by the same shelf over a s.p.a.ce many leagues in length, requiring us to a.s.sume, that during a rise of 1156 feet no one portion of the land was raised even a few yards above another; fourthly, the coincidence of level already alluded to of each shelf with a col, or the point forming the head of two glens, from which the rain-waters flow in opposite directions. This last-mentioned feature in the physical geography of Lochaber Mr. Darwin endeavoured to explain in the following manner. He called these cols "land-straits,"

and regarding them as having been anciently sounds or channels between islands, he pointed out that there is a tendency in such sounds to be silted up, and always the more so in proportion to their narrowness. In a chart of the Falkland Islands, by Captain Sulivan, R.N., it appears that there are several examples there of straits where the soundings diminish regularly towards the narrowest part. One is so nearly dry that it can be walked over at low water, and another, no longer covered by the sea, is supposed to have recently dried up in consequence of a small alteration in the relative level of sea and land. "Similar straits,"

observes Mr. Chambers, "hovering, in character, between sea and land, and which may be called fords, are met with in the Hebrides. Such, for example, is the pa.s.sage dividing the islands of Lewis and Harris, and that between North Uist and Benbecula, both of which would undoubtedly appear as cols, coinciding with a terrace or raised beach, all round the islands if the sea were to subside."*

(* R. Chambers, "Ancient Sea Margins" page 114.)

The first of the difficulties above alluded to, namely, the non-extension of the shelves over certain parts of the glens, might be explained, said Mr. Darwin, by supposing in certain places a quick growth of green turf on a good soil, which prevented the rain from was.h.i.+ng away any loose materials lying on the surface. But wherever the soil was barren, and where green sward took long to form, there may have been time for the removal of the gravel. In one case an intermediate shelf appears for a short distance (three quarters of a mile) on the face of the mountain called Tombhran, between the two upper shelves, and is seen nowhere else. It occurs where there was the longest s.p.a.ce of open water, and where the waves may have acquired a more than ordinary power to heap up detritus.

The unequal number of the shelves in valleys communicating with each other, and in which the boundary rocks are similar in composition, and the general absence of any shelves at corresponding alt.i.tudes in glens on the opposite watershed, like that of the Spey, and in valleys where the waters flow eastward, are difficulties attending the marine theory which have never yet been got over. Mr. T.F. Jamieson, before cited, has, during a late visit to Lochaber, in 1861, observed many facts highly confirmatory of the hypothesis of glacier-lakes which, as I have already stated, was originally advanced by Mr. Aga.s.siz. In the first place, he found much superficial scoring and polis.h.i.+ng of rocks, and acc.u.mulation of boulders at those points where signs of glacial action ought to appear, if ice had once dammed up the waters of the glens in which the "roads" occur. Ben Nevis may have sent down its glaciers from the south, and Glen Arkaig from the north, for the mountains at the head of the last-mentioned glen are 3000 feet high, and may, together with other tributary glens, have helped to choke up the great Caledonian valley with ice, so as to block up for a time the mouths of the Spean, Roy, and Gluoy. The temporary conversion of these glens into glacier-lakes is the more conceivable, because the hills at their upper ends not being lofty nor of great extent, they may not have been filled with ice at a time when great glaciers were generated in other adjoining and much higher regions.

Secondly. The shelves, says Mr. Jamieson, are more precisely defined and unbroken than any of the raised beaches or acknowledged ancient coast-lines visible on the west of Scotland, as in Argylls.h.i.+re, for example.

Thirdly. At the level of the lower shelf in Glen Roy, at points where torrents now cut channels through the shelf as they descend the hill-side, there are small delta-like extensions of the shelf, perfectly preserved, as if the materials, whether fine or coa.r.s.e, had originally settled there in a placid lake, and had not been acted upon by tidal currents, mingling them with the sediment of other streams. These deltas are too entire to allow us to suppose that they have at any time since their origin been exposed to the waves of the sea.

Fourthly. The alluvium on the cols or watersheds, before alluded to, is such as would have been formed if the waters of the rivers had been made to flow east, or out of the upper ends of the supposed glacier-lakes, instead of escaping at the lower ends, in a westerly direction, where the great blockages of ice are a.s.sumed to have occurred.

In addition to these arguments of Mr. Jamieson, I may mention that in Switzerland, at present, no testacea live in the cold waters of glacier-lakes; so that the entire absence of fossil sh.e.l.ls, whether marine or freshwater, in the stratified materials of each shelf, would be accounted for if the theory above mentioned be embraced.

When I examined "the parallel roads" in 1825, in company with Dr.

Buckland, neither this glacier theory nor Mr. Darwin's suggestion of ancient sea-margins had been proposed, and I have never since revisited Lochaber. But I retain in my memory a vivid recollection of the scenery and physical features of the district, and I now consider the glacier-lake theory as affording by far the most satisfactory solution of this difficult problem. The objection to it, which until lately appeared to be the most formidable, and which led Mr. Robert Chambers in his "Sea Margins," to reject it entirely, was the difficulty of conceiving how the waters could be made to stand so high in Glen Roy as to allow the uppermost shelf to be formed. Grant a barrier of ice in the lower part of the glen of sufficient alt.i.tude to stop the waters from flowing westward, still, what prevented them from escaping over the col at the head of Glen Glaster? This col coincides exactly in level, as Mr.

Milne Home first ascertained, with the second or middle shelf of Glen Roy. The difficulty here stated appears now to be removed by supposing that the higher lines or roads were formed before the lower ones, and when the quant.i.ty of ice was most in excess. We must imagine that at the time when the uppermost shelf of Glen Roy was forming in a shallow lake, the lower part of that glen was filled up with ice, and, according to Mr. Jamieson, a glacier from Loch Treig then protruded itself across Glen Spean and rested on the flank of the hill on the opposite side in such a manner as effectually to prevent any water from escaping over the Glen Glaster col. The proofs of such a glacier having actually existed at the point in question consist, he says, in numerous cross striae observable in the bottom of Glen Spean, and in the presence of moraine matter in considerable abundance on the flanks of the hill extending to heights above the Glen Glaster col. When the ice shrank into less dimensions the second shelf would be formed, having its level determined by the col last mentioned, Glen Spean in the meantime being filled with a glacier. Finally, the ice blockage common to glens Roy, Spean, and Laggan, which consisted probably of a glacier from Ben Nevis, gave rise to the lowest and most extensive lake, the waters of which escaped over the pa.s.s of Muckul or the col at the head of Loch Laggan, which, as Mr.

Jamieson has now ascertained: agrees precisely in level with the lowest of all the shelves, and where there are unequivocal signs of a river having flowed out for a considerable period.

Dr. Hooker has described some parallel terraces, very a.n.a.logous in their aspect to those of Glen Roy, as existing in the higher valleys of the Himalaya, of which his pencil has given us several graphic ill.u.s.trations. He believes these Indian shelves to have originated on the borders of glacier-lakes, the barriers of which were usually formed by the ice and moraines of lateral or tributary glaciers, which descended into and crossed the main valley, as we have supposed in the case of Glen Roy; but others he ascribes to the terminal moraine of the princ.i.p.al glacier itself, which had retreated during a series of milder seasons, so as to leave an interval between the ice and the terminal moraine. This inters.p.a.ce caused by the melting of ice becomes filled with water and forms a lake, the drainage of which usually takes place by percolation through the porous parts of the moraine, and not by a stream overflowing that barrier. Such a glacier-lake Dr. Hooker actually found in existence near the head of the Yangma valley in the Himalaya.

It was moreover partially bounded by recently formed marginal terraces or parallel roads, implying changes of level in the barrier of ice and moraine matter.*

(* Hooker, "Himalayan Journal" volume 1 page 242; 2 pages 119, 121, 166. I have also profited by the author's personal explanations.)

It has been sometimes objected to the hypothesis of glacier-lakes, as applied to the case of Glen Roy, that the shelves must have taken a very long period for their formation. Such a lapse of time, it is said, might be consistent with the theory of pauses or stationary periods in the rise of the land during an intermittent upward movement, but it is hardly compatible with the idea of so precarious and fluctuating a barrier as a ma.s.s of ice. But the reader will have seen that the permanency of level in such glacier-lakes has no necessary connection with minor changes in the height of the supposed dam of ice. If a glacier descending from higher mountains through a tributary glen enters the main valley in which there happens to be no glacier, the river is arrested in its course and a lake is formed. The dam may be constantly repaired and may vary in height several hundreds of feet without affecting the level of the lake, so long as the surplus waters escape over a col or parting ridge of rock. The height at which the waters remain stationary is determined solely by the elevation of the col, and not by the barrier of ice, provided the barrier is higher than the col.

But if we embrace the theory of glacier-lakes, we must be prepared to a.s.sume not only that the sea had nothing to do with the original formation of the "parallel roads," but that it has never, since the disappearance of the lakes, risen in any one of the glens up to the level of the lowest shelf, which is about 850 feet high; for in that case the remarkable persistency and integrity of the roads and deltas, before described, must have been impaired.

We have seen that 50 miles to the south of Lochaber, the glacier formations of Lanarks.h.i.+re with marine sh.e.l.ls of arctic character have been traced to the height of 524 feet. About 50 miles to the south-east in Perths.h.i.+re are those stratified clays and sands, near Killiecrankie, which were once supposed to be of submarine origin, and which in that case would imply the former submergence of what is now dry land to the extent of 1550 feet, or several hundred feet beyond the highest of the parallel roads. Even granting that these laminated drifts may have had a different origin, as above suggested, there are still many facts connected with the distribution of erratics and the striation of rocks in Scotland which are not easily accounted for without supposing the country to have sunk, since the era of continental ice, to a greater depth than 525 feet, the highest point to which marine sh.e.l.ls have yet been traced.

After what was said of the pressure and abrading power of a general crust of ice, like that now covering Greenland, it is almost superfluous to say that the parallel roads must have been of later date than such a state of things, for every trace of them must have been obliterated by the movement of such a ma.s.s of ice. It is no less clear that as no glacier-lakes can now exist in Greenland [26], so there could have been none in Scotland, when the mountains were covered with one great crust of ice. It may, however, be contended that the parallel roads were produced when the general crust of ice first gave place to a period of separate glaciers, and that no period of deep submergence ever intervened in Lochaber after the time of the lakes. Even in that case, however, it is difficult not to suppose that the Glen Roy country partic.i.p.ated in the downward movement which sank part of Lanarks.h.i.+re 525 feet beneath the sea, subsequently to the first great glaciation of Scotland. Yet that amount of subsidence might have occurred, and even a more considerable one, without causing the sea to rise to the level of the lowest shelf, or to a height of 850 feet above the present sea-level.

This is a question on which I am not prepared at present to offer a decided opinion.

Whether the horizontality of the shelves or terrace-lines is really as perfect as has been generally a.s.sumed is a point which will require to be tested by a more accurate trigonometrical survey than has yet been made. The preservation of precisely the same level in the lowest line throughout the glens of Roy, Spean, and Laggan, for a distance of 20 miles east and west, and 10 or 12 miles north and south, would be very wonderful if ascertained with mathematical precision. Mr. Jamieson, after making in 1862 several measurements with a spirit-level, has been led to suspect a rise in the lowest shelf of one foot in a mile in a direction from west to east, or from the mouth of Glen Roy to a point 6 miles east of it in Glen Spean. To confirm such observations, and to determine whether a similar rate of rise continues eastward, as far as the pa.s.s of Muckul, would be most important.

On the whole, I conclude that the Glen Roy terrace-lines and those of some neighbouring valleys, were formed on the borders of glacier-lakes, in times long subsequent to the princ.i.p.al glaciation of Scotland. They may perhaps have been nearly as late, especially the lowest of the shelves, as that portion of the Pleistocene period in which Man co-existed in Europe with the mammoth.

CHAPTER 14. -- CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE--CONTINUED.

Signs of extinct Glaciers in Wales.

Great Submergence of Wales during the Glacial Period proved by Marine Sh.e.l.ls.

Still greater Depression inferred from Stratified Drift.

Scarcity of Organic Remains in Glacial Formations.

Signs of extinct Glaciers in England.

Ice Action in Ireland.

Maps ill.u.s.trating successive Revolutions in Physical Geography during the Pleistocene Period.

Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England.

Successive Periods of Junction and Separation of England, Ireland, and the Continent.

Time required for these Changes.

Probable Causes of the Upheaval and Subsidence of the Earth's Crust.

Antiquity of Man considered in relation to the Age of the existing Fauna and Flora.

EXTINCT GLACIERS IN WALES.

The considerable amount of vertical movement in opposite directions, which was suggested in the last chapter, as affording the most probable explanation of the position of some of the stratified and fossiliferous drifts of Scotland, formed since the commencement of the glacial period, will appear less startling if it can be shown that independent observations lead us to infer that a geographical revolution of still greater magnitude accompanied the successive phases of glaciation through which the Welsh mountains have pa.s.sed.

That Wales was once an independent centre of the dispersion of erratic blocks has long been acknowledged. Dr. Buckland published in 1842 his reasons for believing that the Snowdonian mountains in Caernarvons.h.i.+re were formerly covered with glaciers, which radiated from the central heights through the seven princ.i.p.al valleys of that chain, where striae and flutings are seen on the polished rocks directed towards as many different points of the compa.s.s. He also described the "moraines" of the ancient glaciers, and the rounded ma.s.ses of polished rock, called in Switzerland "roches moutonnees." His views respecting the old extinct glaciers of North Wales were subsequently confirmed by Mr. Darwin, who attributed the transport of many of the larger erratic blocks to floating ice. Much of the Welsh glacial drift had already been shown by Mr. Trimmer to have had a submarine origin, and Mr. Darwin maintained that when the land rose again to nearly its present height, glaciers filled the valleys, and "swept them clean of all the rubbish left by the sea."*

(* "Philosophical Magazine" series 3 volume 21 page 180.)

Professor Ramsay, in a paper read to the Geological Society in 1851, and in a later work on the glaciation of North Wales, described three successive glacial periods, during the first of which the land was much higher than it now is, and the quant.i.ty of ice excessive; secondly, a period of submergence when the land was 2300 feet lower than at present, and when the higher mountain tops only stood out of the sea as a cl.u.s.ter of low islands, which nevertheless were covered with snow; and lastly, a third period when the marine boulder drift formed in the middle period was ploughed out of the larger valleys by a second set of glaciers, smaller than those of the first period. This last stage of glaciation may have coincided with that of the parallel roads of Glen Roy, spoken of in the last chapter. In Wales it was certainly preceded by submergence, and the rocks had been exposed to glacial polis.h.i.+ng and friction before they sank.

Fortunately the evidence of the sojourn of the Welsh mountains beneath the waters of the sea is not deficient, as in Scotland, in that complete demonstration which the presence of marine sh.e.l.ls affords. The late Mr.

Trimmer discovered such sh.e.l.ls on Moel Tryfan, in North Wales, in drift elevated more than 1300 feet above the level of the sea. It appears from his observations, and those of the late Edward Forbes, corroborated by others of Professor Ramsay and Mr. Prestwich, that about twelve species of sh.e.l.ls, including Fusus bamfius, F. antiquus, Venus striatula (Forbes and Hanley), have been met with at heights of between 1000 and 1400 feet, in drift, reposing on a surface of rock which had been previously exposed to glacial friction and striation.*

(* Ramsay, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"

volume 8 1852 page 372.)

The sh.e.l.ls, as a whole, are those of the glacial period, and not of the Norwich Crag. Two localities of these sh.e.l.ls in Wales, in addition to that first pointed out by Mr. Trimmer, have since been observed by Professor Ramsay, who, however, is of opinion that the amount of submergence can by no means be limited to the extreme height to which the sh.e.l.ls happen to have been traced; for drift of the same character as that of Moel Tryfan extends continuously to the height of 2300 feet.

[27]

RARITY OF ORGANIC REMAINS IN GLACIAL FORMATIONS.

The general dearth of sh.e.l.ls in such formations, below as well as above the level at which Mr. Trimmer first found them, deserves notice.

Whether we can explain it or not, it is a negative character which seems to belong very generally to deposits formed in glacial seas. The porous nature of the strata, and the length of time during which they have been permeated by rain-water, may partly account, as we hinted in a former chapter, for the destruction of organic remains. But it is also possible that they were originally scarce, for we read of the waters of the sea being so freshened and chilled by the melting of ice-bergs in some Norwegian and Icelandic fjords, that the fish are driven away, and all the mollusca killed. The moraines of glaciers are always from the first devoid of sh.e.l.ls, and if transported by ice-bergs to a distance, and deposited where the ice melts, may continue as barren of every indication of life as they were when they originated.

Nevertheless, it may be said, on the other hand, that herds of seals and walruses crowd the floating ice of Spitzbergen in lat.i.tude 80 degrees north, of which Mr. Lamont has recently given us a lively picture,*nand huge whales fatten on myriads of pteropods in polar regions.

(* "Seasons with the Sea-Horses" 1861.)

It had been suggested that the bottom of the sea, at the era of extreme submergence in Scotland and Wales, was so deep as to reach the zero of animal life, which, in part of the Mediterranean (the Aegean, for example), the late Edward Forbes fixed, after a long series of dredgings, at 300 fathoms. But the sh.e.l.ls of the glacial drift of Scotland and Wales, when they do occur, are not always those of deep seas; and, moreover, our faith in the uninhabitable state of the ocean at great depths has been rudely shaken, by the recent discovery of Captain McClintock and Dr. Wallich, of starfish in water more than a thousand fathoms deep (7560 feet!), midway between Greenland and Iceland. That these radiata were really dredged up from the bottom, and that they had been living and feeding there, appeared from the fact that their stomachs were full of Globigerina, of which foraminiferous creatures, both living and dead, the oozy bed of the ocean at that vast depth was found to be exclusively composed. [28]

Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain, that over large areas in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, I might add throughout the northern hemisphere on both sides of the Atlantic, the stratified drift of the glacial period is very commonly devoid of fossils, in spite of the occurrence here and there, at the height of 500, 700, and even 1400 feet, of marine sh.e.l.ls. These, when met with, belong, with few exceptions, to known living species. I am therefore unable to agree with Mr. Kjerulf that the amount of former submergence can be measured by the extreme height at which sh.e.l.ls happen to have been found.