Scandinavian Diluvium. 311 



lions which geology inquires into, and of which it often long 

 awaits the true solution, is the phenomenon known by the name 

 of Scandinavian Diluvium. It is known that, from the shores 

 of Northumberland to the environs of Moscow, the plains of 

 England, the Low Countries, Denmark, the North of Ger- 

 many, Poland, and Russia, are covered by an immense number 

 of blocksj often of prodigious size, of different rocks whose ana^ 

 logues only occur on the other side of the Baltic Sea, and which 

 must have been transported from the mountains of the north 

 to their present position by causes, the exact determination of 

 which is one of the most beautiful problems of geology. 



All the blocks, the gravels, and the sands set in motion by 

 this problematical cause, did not arrive at the limits which I 

 have mentioned. Sweden is covered with them, and the traces 

 which the phenomenon left there, have been for long the ob- 

 ject of many observations which our fellow member M. Brong- 

 niart has partly verified, and which he summed up in a memoir 

 read to the Philomatic Society the 12th April 1828.* Since 

 that time the observations have continued ; M. Sefstroem has 

 been of late particularly occupied with them, and the conclu- 

 sions at which he has arrived are stated in a letter from M. 

 Berzelius to M. Dumont d'Urvile, inserted in the Compte Rendu 

 of our meetings for the month of August last.-f" 



Traces of this phenomenon also occur in Norway, and M. 

 Eugene Robert, in the tour which he made last summer, found 

 traces of it in the neighbourhood of Christiania. Nevertheless 

 there have been hitherto discovered much fewer traces of this 

 diluvial phenomenon in Norway and Lapland than in Sweden. 

 It will be of importance to ascertain if the transported materials 

 form also there those long stripes in the form of dikes running 

 N.NE. — S.SW., called in Swedish 6se or sundosar, and if 

 they were always spread over the surface of Xh^Jahluns or 

 shelly clay of which I have already spoken. 



One of the most curious circumstances connected with the 

 phenomenon of which we are speaking, is the polished furrows 

 hollowed out on the surface of the rocks, which Saussure, in 



* See Annates des Sciences NatureJles, vol. 14, p. 5. 



t C<mptes liendusy vol. 5, p. 341 (Meeting of the 28tli Au^st 1837). Viak 

 also Edinburgh New Phil Journal, vol. xxiii. p. 69. 



