The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

EARLIER DISPLACEMENTS OF CRUST 279
earth's history. In reality the proof of the complete disappearance of
the ice and its return at a later time is, in the nature of things, a
matter of great difficulty and it is not surprising that there are differ-
ences of opinion (87:20).
Croll pointed out the ephemeral character of glacial evi-
dence eighty years ago in books that are still eminently
readable. After first discussing the accumulations of strata
containing plant and animal remains during a period of
temperate climate, he comments thus on their subsequent
destruction:
. . . We
need not wonder that not a single vestige of [these strata] re-
mains; for when the ice sheet again crept over the island [Britain]
everything animate and inanimate would be ground down to powder.
We are certain that prior to the glacial epoch our island must have
been covered with life and vegetation. But not a single vestige of
these is now to be found; no, not even of the very soil on which the
vegetation grew. The solid rock itself upon which the soil lay has
been ground down to mud by the ice sheet, and, to a large extent, as
Professor Geikie remarks, swept away into the adjoining seas (91:257).
It is obvious, of course, that whatever could destroy all the
surface deposits of a temperate period would also, at the
same time, destroy any evidences of former glaciations. Croll
goes on to say:
It is on a land surface that the principal traces of the action of
ice during a glacial period are left, for it is there that the stones are
chiefly striated, the rocks ground down, and the boulder clay formed.
But where are all our ancient land surfaces? They are not to be found.
The total thickness of the stratified rocks of Great Britain is, accord-
ing to Professor Ramsay, nearly fourteen miles. But from the bottom
to the top of this enormous pile of deposits there is hardly a single
of old land surfaces of a
land surface to be detected. True, patches
local character exist, such, for example, as the dirt beds of Portland;
but, with the exception of coal seams, every general formation from
top to bottom has been accumulated under water, and none but the
under-clays ever existed as a land surface. And it is here, in such a
formation, that the geologist has to collect all his information regard-
ing the existence of former glacial periods. . . .
If we examine the matter fully we shall be led to conclude that
the transformation of a land surface into a sea-bottom (by erosion and