34.6 MAN AS THE COTEMPOEARY OF THE MAMMOTH 



anifonnly rounded summits, the bellying convexity, as it is called, of the sur- 

 face show themselves only below that limit, and above it first commences the 

 peculiar fonn, the individualizing structure which gives to the whole chain so 

 striking and sublime an effect. 



As in all other mountain ranges, these scoured and furrowed surfaces stand 

 here in the most exact parallelism with the heaps of gravel and sand, as well as 

 the boulders, which occur now on the sides and now on the beds of the valleys, 

 and which have evidently been transported from far distant localities. In Scan- 

 dinavia, equally as in the neighborhood of the Alps, hundreds of })laces can be 

 pointed out where blocks of enormous weight and magnitude with sharp edges, 

 and which can therefore by no possibility have been rolled, are found leagues 

 away from their place of origin and deposited on a substratum of rock widely 

 differing from their own structure. The direction of the furrows and striae on 

 the abraded surfaces accords with the route which these blocks must have fol- 

 lowed in their migratory movement; as it shows also the points from which the 

 moving force derived its impulse. 



In various charts the observations made in Scandinavia and Finland respecting 

 the form and arrangement of these abrasions have been collected and compared. 

 Conformable for the most part with the direction of the great valleys and the 

 general slope, the highest point of which is found in the long coast-chain of 

 Norway, there are yet points where isolated mountain summits rise, as in the 

 Alps, to a loftier altitude, and from these the traces of the abrasion radiate into 

 the subjacent valle3'S. 



From a collation of the phenomena under consideration, the abraded surfaces 

 with their rounded outlines and linear furrowings, the angular and unworn 

 eiTatic rocks, the accumulations of gravel and sand which either run along the 

 sides of the valleys or form in their beds transverse walls or ramparts, convex in 

 the direction of the descending slope, there can be no longer any reasonable 

 doubt that we have before us in these phenomena the work of glaciers — glaciers- 

 which once covered all the surfaces on which this assembhige of phenomena pre- 

 sents itself, and which tlierefore overspread as with a continuous roof of ice the 

 whole of the Scandinavian peninsula and Finland. 



M. Kjerulf, of Christiania, calls notice very justly to the observations of Dr. 

 Rink, who passed several years in Greenland and there attentively studied the 

 ice envelope of the interior country. A continent of wide dimensions, not 

 smaller than the whole Scandinavian peninsula, is here seen covered with an 

 enormous ice-crust, which attains a height of 1,000* feet, and which exhibits a 

 general movement from the interior towards the western coast. Slowly but 

 steadily does this mass, bearing its adventitious freight of rocks, glide downward 

 to the sea, where it breaks off in immense fragments ; and it is these fragments 

 which as icel)ergs, often of colossal size, are borne by the ocean currents even as 

 far as the latitude of the Azores, melting away gradually in their progress,. and 

 depositing their rocky burden on the bottom of the sea. 



Precisely the same phenomenon was once exhibited in Norway, Sweden, and 

 Finland. The land was hidden under a vast covering of ice, which cairied down 

 towards the sea the pebbles and gravel, or, if the expression may be allowed, the 

 emery which served this stupendous polishing apparatus as a substratum. The 

 whole mass of Norwegian rock was worn down and striated as wo now see it ; 

 but the Arctic ocean itself which surrounded this pre-historical Greenland stood 

 at first deeper than the present one ; for at many points the abraded surfaces, 

 with the furrows well preserved, stretch down under the water. If this circum- 

 stance be not of itself sufficient to explain the refrigeration of this northern 

 region in a degree equal to that of Greenland, it is to be considered that the greater 

 elevation of the land above the sea must to some extent have co-operated to that 



* •;i,000 feet perpendicular at the heads of the fiords which intersect the coast. {LyelVs 

 Ant. of Man.) 



