176 SCIENCE IX SHORT CHAPTERS. 



these highland mountains that much of the smoothing and 

 polishing has vanished. But although the finer marks of the 

 ice-chisel have thus frequently been obliterated, yet the 

 broader effects remain conspicuous enough. From an exten- 

 sive examination of these we gather that the ice could not have 

 been less, and was probably more than 3000 feet thick in its 

 deepest parts. ' ' 



Page 80 he says : " Bearing in mind the vast thickness 

 reached by the Scotch ice-sheet, it becomes very evident that 

 the ice would flow along the bottom of the sea with as much 

 ease as it poured across the land, and every island would be 

 surmounted and crushed, and scored and polished just as 

 readily as the hills of the mainland were." 



Mr. Geikie describes the Scandinavian ice-sheet in similar 

 terms, but ascribes to it a still greater thickness. He says 

 (page 404) : " The whole country has been moulded and 

 rubbed and polished by an immense sheet of ice, which could 



OUTLYING LOFODENS, NOT GLACIATED. 



hardly have been less than 6000 or even 7000 feet thick," 

 and he maintains that this spread over the sea and coalesced 

 with the ice-sheet of Scotland. 



My recollection of the Lofoden Islands, which from their posi- 

 tion afford an excellent crucial test of this question, led me to 

 believe that their configuration presented a direct refutation of 

 Mr. Geikie's remaikable inference ; but a mere recollection of 

 scenery being too vague, a second visit was especially desira- 

 ble in reference to this point. The result of the special 

 observations I made during this second visit fully confirmed 

 the impression derived from memory. 



I found in the first place that all along the coast from 

 Stavanger to the Varan ger fiord every lock near the shore is 

 glaciated ; among the thousands of low-lying ridges that peer 

 above the water to various heights none near the mainland are 

 angular. The general character of these is shown in the 

 sketch of " My Sea Serpent," in the last edition of " Through 

 Norway with a Knapsack.'' 



