Mr Hugh Miller on River -Terracinf). 305 



periodicity of any kind, without first proving that the terraces 

 range in opposite pairs. All elevation of the land has its 

 ultimate effects upon rivers. It prolongs the term of their 

 activity. There is the same manifest relation between the 

 two that exists between area and population. It is scarcely 

 thought necessary as yet, however, to connect increments of 

 population with upheaval of coast-lines. Activity in both 

 cases may be quite independent of coast-lines, if we but have, 

 in the first place, a country fit to people, or to terrace. If it 

 should ever be proved to the satisfaction of all geologists that 

 the glacial period in this country closed, not during a sub- 

 mergence, it will be admitted that in the renewal of free 

 drainage upon a country with fresh gradients, w^e have all 

 that conduces to river-terracing as we now chiefly find it. 

 It will probably be found, however, that the distinction into 

 terraces in " closed basins " and open valleys or valley 

 mouths is of much importance, and nowhere better marked 

 than in Norway. When they are approached from the 

 Huttonian point of view, the Norwegian terraces, which have 

 already fascinated all geologists who have seen them, will 

 perhaps, in so far as they are river terraces, receive a better 

 interpretation.* 



In this country, as in other northern lands, the terrace 

 period is emphatically a post-glacial period. To the Ice Age 

 we owe many features of lightsomeness and beauty in the 

 face of the earth, and among them river terraces, which, 

 beautiful themselves, seem constructed on purpose that we 

 might the better view the beauties of valleys from them. 



Like all other features of surface configuration they are 

 only temporary. At first steep scars, then assuming the 



* How narrowly this better interpretation has escaped Professor Kjerulf 

 will be seen from the following quotation from one of his papers: "When 

 the flat of a new-formed terrace is laid dry (by a jerk of upheaval), running 

 water begins to cut into it ; the stream meanders changefully to and fro, and 

 makes among the terraces a broad course levelled out into an inclined plane ; 

 while of the terraces there may remain only traces far in towards the valley 

 side" (Ora Sknringsmaerker, etc., Christiania, 1871). "Were this levelling 

 only recognised as occurring in the middle and at the sides at different times, 

 Professor Kjerulf would find himself enabled to meet Petersen's objection 

 to his present views, that the coast has not always risen intermittently ; and 

 Gunijp.lius', that the terraces are not always opposite. 



VOL. VII. U 



