GEOLOGY. 265 



Imagine a debacle of a magnitude such as would corre- 

 spond to the size of the glaciers of those times, and the 

 rapidity of its flow, and we shall not wonder that stones 

 which might have seemed to us to have been immovable 

 because of their size and weight, have been carried away 

 and buried in some lower-lying lake. In this then, as well 

 as in the striae on the rocks, we may see the traces of the 

 glacial period, the effects of glacial action. 



Of the vast extent of the glacier covering Scandinavia 

 and Northern Russia at that time, under one sheet of ice, 

 it is difficult for the novice in the study of such pheno- 

 mena to form an adequate conception. 



Christiansand stands upon ice-ground rocks. All the 

 islands for miles out to sea are what are known as roches 

 moutonnees, peering above the waves. The road leads 

 inland through a wild pass, with hills on either side, with 

 dark pines growing in chinks on the grey rock, and the 

 bottom of the pass is filled with a plain of boulders and 

 sand, which look as if ice had dropped them yesterday. 

 Throughout Norway and Sweden, and I may say the 

 whole north of Europe, boulders abound, and zircon 

 syenite found as fixt rock near Christiansand has both 

 been found in Lapland as a perched block, and in pieces 

 of lesser bulk at Galloway in Scotland, and thus we 

 are led to the consideration of another aspect of the 

 case. 



The author of Frost and Fire has traced the striae in 

 several valley lines in Scotland. And in allusion to the views 

 advanced by Professor Ramsay, and reargued b} r Professor 

 Geikie, he says ' Mr Ramsay attributes many rock basins 

 and their lakes to glaciation, and intimates that he goes 

 further and attributes these, and many of the main lines of 

 denudation in Northern Europe, in North America, and 

 elsewhere, to glaciaton, combined with ocean currents.' 



Both in Scotland and in Scandinavia he gave unwearied 

 attention to the striae and their conformation in accordance 

 with the movement of waves, which he had made a special 



