3. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 111.

4. "Great Ice Age," Geikie, p. 6.]

{p. 4}

"The lowest member is invariably a tough, stony clay, called 'till'
or 'hard-pan.' Throughout wide districts stony clay alone occurs."[1]

"It is hard to say whether the till consists more of stones or of
clay."[2]

This "till," this first deposit, will be found to be the strangest
and most interesting.

In the second place, although the Drift is found on the earth, it is
unfossiliferous. That is to say, it contains no traces of
pre-existent or contemporaneous life.

This, when we consider it, is an extraordinary fact:

Where on the face of this life-marked earth could such a mass of
material be gathered up, and not contain any evidences of life? It is
as if one were to say that he had collected the _detritus_ of a great
city, and that it showed no marks of man's life or works.

"I would reiterate," says Geikie,[3] "that nearly all the Scotch
shell-bearing beds belong to the _very close of the glacial_ period;
only in one or two places have shells ever been obtained, with