OOLITIC PERIOD.
North of Scotland.—There is not wanting evidence of something like the action of ice during the Oolitic period.[179]
In the North of Scotland Mr. James Geikie says there is a coarse boulder conglomerate associated with the Jurassic strata in the east of Sutherland, the possibly glacial origin of which long ago suggested itself to Professor Ramsay and other observers. Mr. Judd believes the boulders to have been floated down by ice from the Highland mountains at the time the Jurassic strata were being accumulated.
North Greenland.—During the Oolitic period a warm condition of climate extended to North Greenland. For example, in Prince Patrick’s Island, at Wilkie Point, in lat. 76° 20′ N., and long. 117° 20′ W., Oolitic rocks containing an ammonite (Ammonites McClintocki, Haughton), like A. concavus and other shells of Oolitic species, were found by Captain McClintock.[180] In Katmai Bay, near Behring’s Straits, the following Oolitic fossils were discovered—Ammonites Wasnessenskii, A. biplex, Belemnites paxillosus, and Unio liassinus.[181] Captain McClintock found at Point Wilkie, in Prince Patrick’s Island, lat. 76° 20′, a bone of Ichthyosaurus, and Sir E. Belcher found in Exmouth Island, lat. 76° 16′ N., and long. 96° W., at an elevation of 570 feet above the level of the sea, bones which were examined by Professor Owen, and pronounced to be those of the same animal.[182] Mr. Salter remarks that at the time that these fossils were deposited, “a condition of climate something like that of our own shores was prevailing in latitudes not far short of 80° N.”[183] And Mr. Jukes says that during the Oolitic period, “in latitudes where now sea and land are bound in ice and snow throughout the year, there formerly flourished animals and plants similar to those living in our own province at that time. The questions thus raised,” continues Mr. Jukes, “as to the climate of the globe when cephalopods and reptiles such as we should expect to find only in warm or temperate seas, could live in such high latitudes, are not easy to answer.”[184] And Professor Haughton remarks, that he thinks it highly improbable that any change in the position of land and water could ever have produced a temperature in the sea at 76° north latitude which would allow of the existence of ammonites, especially species so like those that lived at the same time in the tropical warm seas of the South of England and France at the close of the Liassic, and commencement of the Lower Oolitic period.[185]
The great abundance of the limestone and coal of the Oolitic system shows also the warm and equable condition of the climate which must have then prevailed.
CRETACEOUS PERIOD.
Croydon.—A large block of crystalline rock resembling granite was found imbedded in a pit, on the side of the old London and Brighton road near Purley, about two miles south of Croydon. Mr. Godwin-Austen has shown conclusively that it must have been transported there by means of floating ice. This boulder was associated with loose sea-sand, coarse shingle, and a smaller boulder weighing twenty or twenty-five pounds, and all water-worn. These had all sunk together without separating. Hence they must have been firmly held together, both during the time that they were being floated away, and also whilst sinking to the bottom of the cretaceous sea. Mr. Godwin-Austen supposes the whole to have been carried away frozen to the bottom of a mass of ground-ice. When the ice from melting became unable to float the mass attached to it, the whole would then sink to the bottom together.[186]
Dover.—While the workmen were employed in cutting the tunnel on the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, between Lydden Hill and Shepherdswell, a few miles from Dover, they came upon a mass of coal imbedded in chalk, at a depth of 180 feet. It was about 4 feet square, and from 4 to 10 inches thick. The coal was friable and highly bituminous. It resembled some of the Wealden or Jurassic coal, and was unlike the true coal of the coal-measures. The specific gravity of the coal precluded the supposition that it could have floated away of itself into the cretaceous sea. “Considering its friability,” says Mr. Godwin-Austen, “I do not think that the agency of a floating tree could have been engaged in its transport; but, looking at its flat, angular form, it seems to me that its history may agree with what I have already suggested with reference to the boulder in the chalk at Croydon. We may suppose that during the Cretaceous period some bituminous beds of the preceding Oolitic period lay so as to be covered with water near the sea-margin, or along some river-bank, and from which portions could be carried off by ice, and so drifted away, until the ice was no longer able to support its load.”[187]
Mr. Godwin-Austen then mentions a number of other cases of blocks being found in the chalk. In regard to those cases he appropriately remarks that, as the cases where the occurrence of such blocks has been observed are likely to be far less numerous than those which have escaped observation, or failed to have been recorded, and as the chalk exposed in pits and quarries bears only a most trifling proportion to the whole horizontal extent of the formation, we have no grounds to conclude that the above are exceptional cases.
Boulders have also been found in the cretaceous strata of the Alps by Escher von der Linth.[188]