234 VIEWS OF M. KJERULE. CHAP. xm. 



M. Kjerulf, of Christiania, in a paper lately communicated 

 to the Geological Society of Berlin,* has objected, and perhaps 

 with reason, to what he considers the undue extent to which 

 I have, in some of my writings, supposed the mountains of 

 northern Europe to have been submerged during the glacial 

 period. He remarks that the signs of glacial action on the 

 Scandinavian mountains ascend as high as 6,000 feet, whereas 

 fossil marine shells of the same period never reach elevations 

 exceeding 600 feet. The land he says may have been much 

 higher than it now is, but it has evidently not been much 

 lower since the commencement of the glacial period, or marine 

 shells would be traceable to more elevated points. In regard 

 to the absence of marine shells, I shall point out in the se 

 quel how small is the dependence we can place on this kind 

 of negative evidence, if we desire to test by it the extent to 

 which the land has been submerged. I cannot therefore con 

 sent to limit the probable depression and re-elevation of 

 Scandinavia to 600 feet. But that the larger part of the 

 glaciation of that country has been supramarine, I am willing 

 to concede. In support of this view M. Kjerulf observes that 

 the direction of the furrows and striae, produced by glacial 

 abrasion, neither conforms to a general movement of floating 

 ice from the Polar regions, nor to the shape of the existing 

 valleys, as it would do if it had been caused by independent 

 glaciers generated in the higher valleys after the land had 

 acquired its actual shape. Their general arrangement and 

 apparent irregularities are, he contends, much more in accor 

 dance with the hypothesis of there having been at one time 

 a universal covering of ice over the whole of Norway and 

 Sweden, like that now existing in Greenland, which, being 

 annually recruited by fresh falls of snow, was continually 

 pressing outwards and downwards to the coast and lower 

 regions, after crossing many of the lower ridges, and having 



* Zeitschrift der G-eologischen G-esellschaft, Berlin, 1860. 



