Periglacial conditions were prevalent in eastern Austria during the Pleistocene; therefore, investigations have dealt mainly with terrace and loess features. In this area it is possible to compile a stratigraphy of the complete Pleistocene. The Pleistocene period consists of the “classic” Diluvium in the sense of Penck and Brückner and also of the pre-Günz times. Pre-Günz times lasted probably as long as the “classic” Diluvium: several terraces, accumulated in cold times, are preserved from this period. Large-scale down-cutting occurred in the “great” interglacial (Mindel-Riss) when, for the last time, intensive weathering took place. The Würm Glaciation is distinguished by many loess deposits with well-defined paleosols, originating from several paleoclimatic provinces. In spite of earlier opinions, a bipartition of the Würm must be assumed, with the Paudorf interstadial separating the two sections. The fossil soil of Göttweig was formed in the Riss-Würm Interglacial.

Abstract The first stop on Charles Darwin's famous voyage around the world in HMS Beagle was at Porto Praya (Praia), the principal town on the island of St Jago (São Tiago) in the Cape Verde archipelago. From 16 January to 8 February 1832, Darwin enjoyed his first substantive opportunity to study the natural history of an exotic place. Darwin himself regarded this occasion as a significant turning point in his life because, according to his autobiography, it was here that he decided to research and publish a book on the geology of the places visited on the voyage. He also recalled that it was here, the very first port call, that convinced him of the ‘wonderful superiority’ of Charles Lyell's uniformitarian geology over the doctrine of successive cataclysms that he had been taught in England. Later commentators have generally accepted this account, which is significant for understanding the intellectual background to the Origin of Species , at face value. In this paper we reconstruct some of Darwin's observations at St Jago based on his contemporaneous notes and diary, and in the light of our own visit made in January 2002. We find little evidence to substantiate the claim that he interpreted the geology in Lyellian terms at the time. Instead, he formulated a theory involving a great cataclysm to explain the dramatic scenery in the island's interior. He speculated that a torrent of water had carved the main valleys of the island, leaving deposits of diluvium in their beds. It is indisputable that Darwin came to embrace gradualist thinking enthusiastically during the voyage. Some of his observations made on St Jago, especially relating to uplift of the coast, were instrumental in this change of view, but the conversion was gradual, not sudden. His later published works make no mention of his original catastrophist interpretations.

Abstract The Quaternary, or final period of geological time, has been popularly equated for the last 150 years with the ‘ice age’, when glaciers invaded many high latitude and high altitude parts of the Earth’s surface not previously glaciated since at least the Permo-Carboniferous. Early in the 19th century a distinction was drawn between the ‘solid’ rock formations, which often show a regular stratigraphic order and uniform thickness because of deposition in extensive marine basins, and the thinner, unconsolidated and much more variable ‘drift’ or superficial formations now known to result from more recent deposition mainly in glacial and other non-marine environments. The terms solid and drift are still preserved in the legends of quite recently published British Geological Survey (BGS) maps, although since 2004 they have been replaced by ‘Bedrock’ and ‘Superficial Deposits’, respectively. Over most of England and Wales they correspond to pre-Quaternary and Quaternary deposits. The term drift (or diluvium) originally implied deposition by waters of the Biblical Flood, but with increasing exploration of polar regions in the 19th century it became popular to invoke floating ice as a depositional agent, accounting especially for the large blocks of identifiable rock types (erratics) displaced long distances from their nearest known outcrops. However, both flood and floating ice implied an unlikely submergence of great depth in order to deposit erratics and other drifts on mountains well above present sea level, for example on Moel Tryfan in North Wales, where Quaternary marine molluscs occur at 430 m OD.

Abstract Assuming that there was a Lakeland massif by the end of the Tertiary, let us turn now to discuss the history of investigations of Quaternary geology in the Lakes. For this purpose we must again return to the nineteenth century. To modern eyes, the Lake District shows numerous manifestations of glacial activity, and many interesting studies of glaciation have been undertaken there over the last 150 years or so. However, it was not the area of Britain where the most important early ideas about glaciation and glacial phenomena were developed. The Scots were the leaders in such investigations, and Andrew Ramsay’s work in Wales came before the development of detailed glacial work in the Lakes. Nevertheless, it was inevitable that geologists should turn their attention to glaciation in the Lakes, and in this chapter I examine some of the work done on the Pleistocene geology of the region, considering how it related to the development of theories in other regions and to the general development of Pleistocene stratigraphy. When Sedgwick did his early work in the Lakes in 1822–1824, he saw plenty of evidence for what, following William Buckland, he called ‘alluvium’ and ‘diluvium’. The latter referred, in the words of Buckland (1819, p. 532), to ‘the superficial gravel beds produced by the last universal deluge’, and was regarded as a product of marine deposition, even though the material was generally unsorted and often contained angular clasts. Such material was to be found all over the place in the Lakes