132" Mv Muroluson on the Glacial Theory. 



there are frequent aberrations from the persistent courses of the former. 

 Although he had been at first disposed to think, from the data in a given 

 country around Fakin, that the normal lines were invariably from N. to 

 S., he afterwards discovered that in large tracts of the South of Sweden 

 the direction was from N.W. to S.E., and in others, particularly along 

 the coasts of Norway, from N.E. to S.W.; all these facts being recorded 

 on a map, which is a most valuable document. 



Since Sefstrom's work was published, M. Bohtlingk, a young Russian 

 naturalist of great promise, but, alas ! prematurely carried to the grave, 

 extended his researches to the northern territories of Russia. Observing 

 that the dominant direction of the scratches in parts of the governments 

 of Olonetz and Archangel was from N. to S., and that along the edges of 

 the Bothnian Gulf their course was from W. to E., he passed the summit 

 level of Russian Lapland, and found that there the drift had no longer been 

 transported from N. to S., or from N.W. to S.E., but, on the contrary, 

 from S.E. to N.W. ; or, in other words, that the blocks of Lapland had 

 been carried northwards into tlie shores of the Polar Sea. In a recent 

 letter to Mr Lyell, read before this Society, Professor Nordenskiold has 

 accurately recorded the phenomena of this class observed by him in 

 Finland, and he shews that there the blocks and stride proceed from 

 N.N.W. to S.S.E. 



The theory of Sefstrom and his followers is, that a great flood, trans- 

 porting gravel, sand, and boulders, was impelled from the north over pre- 

 existing land, and that the deviations from the N. and S. direction are 

 due only to various promontories by which the flood was deflected. So 

 convinced was this author that with local aberrations all the transport 

 throughout the whole of Europe had taken phice from north to south, 

 that he not only travelled over the whole of Germany, and saw nothing 

 except materials streaming in the same direction, but even carried with 

 him his northern drift into the Austrian and Bavarian Alps. 1 will not 

 waste your time by pointing out the errors into which his hypothesis, 

 though founded on data good within a limited radius, led this author. 

 Every one who has studied the Alps (and the facts were well known 

 before the days of glacial theories), is perfectly aware that the detritus 

 on their flanks has been shot ofl" eccentrically from the higher central 

 masses. The observations indeed of Bohtlingk give the same result 

 upon a very grand scale in the north, and explain what Sefstrom, with 

 all his valuable labour, had left unknown, viz. that the Scandinavian 

 mountains, as a whole had produced exactly the same detrital result as 

 the Alps, having poured oflT their detritus in all directions /rom a common 

 centre, the northern chain differing only from that of central Europe, 

 by the much wider range to which its blocks and boulders were trans- 

 naitted. 



My own belief. Gentlemen, as you know, has been, that b}^ far the 

 greatest quantity of boulders, gravel, and clay distributed over our 

 plains, and occupying the sides of our e«tuaries and pivcr banks, was ac- 



