32 Robert Chambers, Esq., on Changes of the 
a flooring flat and smooth, produced by a power which has 
been sufficiently strong to cut sharply through the hard 
slaty strata, and leave scarcely any inequalities. At the 
same place, in strong contrast with this marking, the lower 
line shews, on near inspection, only a shattering of the cliff, 
and a wearing of it out in vertical hollows; so that it 
would be impossible to say, within eight or ten feet, what is 
the height of that line. At a place on the south side of 
Qualée island, I found appearances respecting which the fol- 
lowing entry was made in my note-book :—** Nothing could 
well be more perfect than the /edge formed by this terrace, 
there being only such irregularities as were unavoidable from 
the various hardness of the strata; some having been so 
very hard as to leave a slight ridge above the line, while, in 
other instances, a mass was left like a gross short column 
standing up as a monument of what it had been originally 
connected with. One of these surviving masses looked 
much like the ruins of some old castle.” Ata place on the 
mainland, opposite to the above, I found a similar ledge, but 
with an irregular row of short columnar masses in front, 
somewhat like the obelisks designed to support a chain along 
the skirts of an artificial terrace, while in a vacant space 
arose a rough rock, round the top of which the sea had cut a 
circular flat, causing the upper prominence to appear like a 
human head rising above a broad pair of shoulders. (The 
picture here exhibited of the line of erosion at Trondheim 
gives a good idea of the section of a terrace which has a flat, 
well-defined floor and cliff rising above, as well as of an iso- 
lated mass cinctured by a terrace, like the object last spoken 
of.) 
It may be remarked that, according to M. Bravais, pro- 
bably reporting the observations of Professor Keilhau, “the 
mountains of Altenfiord and of all this part of the coast be- 
long to the group of metamorphic rocks; but the nature of 
the rock differs widely, since calcareous beds are found at 
Storvignaes, and at Talvig, between Kortsnaes and Skilli- 
fiord, amphibolic rocks on the island of Seiland and near 
Hammerfest ; while diallage, quartzose sandstones, and ar- 
gillaceous schists, are not rare.’ M. Bravais adds, that he 
was not able to judge of the influence of these rocks on the 
