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From Thomas Francis Jamieson   27 September 1866

Ellon. Aberdeensh.

27 Sep. 1866

My Dear Sir,

I have the pleasure of sending you per Book post copy of a paper of mine on the Glacial phenomena of Caithness 1—where, it seems to me, we have a very interesting example of glaciation having taken place under marine conditions, & where the means of proving this are unusually good.2

In the first place the glacial scoring on the soft shaly flags of that district runs from N.W to S.E. across the angle or extreme north-east corner of Scotland—with a N.W. stos-seite.— Secondly—the drift covering these ice worn rocks—very generally contains fragments of Arctic shells— Foraminifera &c—and what is very interesting—the shells are often very well ice-marked—being rubbed & scratched like the stones.3

—As you may not care about reading all the paper I have marked some of the passages which I have thought might most interest you—

The Table, no. II, at p. 280 contains some facts wh. seem to me very interesting—as for example the remarkably high proportion of N.E. American forms in what seem to be the older glacial marine beds of Scotland.4

Caithness is just the place where we might expect traces of marine conditions during the glacial period—being a low outlying region—a jutting-out corner—not likely to be covered by glaciers, but very likely to be in the way of drifting ice.

I am | Yours very truly | Thos. F. Jamieson

Chas. Darwin Esq. F.R.S. | &c &c

1
The reference is to Jamieson 1866. CD’s copy has not been found in the Darwin Library–CUL or the Darwin Library–Down.
2
Jamieson was a supporter of the theory of glacial submergence that became popular in the mid nineteenth century. The theory tried to reconcile evidence of glacial striation of land surfaces with evidence that some erratic material had been transported from low-lying areas to mountain regions by proposing that the land had been alternately submerged and covered by glaciers and that some deposition had been the result of icebergs melting. For more on the competing glacial theories of the mid to late nineteenth century, see Davies [1969], pp. 294–313.
3
Stoss: ‘designating the side of any object that faces a flow of ice or water’ (OED). The stoss-seite or stoss-side refers to the weathered or smooth side of a hill. Because of the geographical relationship of Caithness to the sea, Jamieson interpreted the north-west to south-east movement of ice as suggesting that marine conditions prevailed during the deposition of the Caithness drift; he also claimed that sea-borne ice could accumulate unstratified mud indistinguishable from that found underneath a glacier moving over land, except for the presence of marine shells (see Jamieson 1866, p. 269 n.)
4
The table referred to contains a comparison of the distribution of fossil molluscs grouped by geographic occurrence found in a number of Scottish glacial beds.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5221,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5221