586 Geological Society : Anniversary Address, 1 842. 



been at first disposed to think, from the data in a given country 

 around Falun, 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 re- 

 corded 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 Rus- 

 sian 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 con- 

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

 Lapland had been carried northwards into the shores of the Polar 

 Sea. In a recent letter to Mr. Lyell, read before this Society, Pro- 

 fessor Nordenskiold has accurately recorded the phEenomena of this 

 class observed by him in Finland, and he shows that there the 

 blocks and striae proceed from N.N.W. to S.S.E. 



The theory of Sefstrora and his followers is, that a great flood, 

 transporting 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 place 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. I 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 de- 

 tritus on their flanks has been shot off" 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 off" their detritus in 

 all directions/rom a common centre, the northern chain differing only 

 from that of central Europe by the much Avider range to which its 

 blocks and boulders were transmitted. 



My own belief, Gentlemen, as you know, has been, that by far 

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

 our plains and occupying the sides of our estuaries and river 

 banks was accumulated beneath the waters of former days. Through- 

 out large tracts of England Ave can demonstrate this to have been 

 the case by the collocation of marine shells of existuig species with 



