348 UNEQUAL MOVEMENT IN FINMARK. CHAP. xvii. 



pliocene eras^ even the last of them, long pi'ior to the com- 

 mencement of the glacial epoch. Hence we may be permitted 

 to suspect that in some other regions, where we have no such 

 means at our command for testing the exact date of certain 

 movements, the time of their occurrence may be far more 

 modern than we usually suppose. In this way some apparent 

 a,nomalies in the position of erratic blocks, seen occasionally 

 at great heights above the parent rocks from which they 

 have been detached, might be explained, as well as the irre- 

 gular direction of certain glacial furrows like those described 

 by Professor Keilhau and Mr. Horbye on the mountains of 

 the Dovrefjeld in lat. 62° N., where the sti-iation and friction 

 are said to be independent of the present shape and slope of 

 the mountains.* Although even in such cases it remains to 

 be proved whether a general crust of continental ice, like that 

 of Greenland, described by Eink (see above, p. 235), would 

 not account for the deviation of the furrows and strite from the 

 normal directions which they ought to have followed had they 

 been due to separate glaciers filling the existing valleys. 



It appears that in general the upward movements in Scan- 

 dinavia, which have raised sea-beaches containing marine 

 shells of recent species to the height of several hundred feet, 

 have been tolerably uniform over very wide spaces ; yet a 

 remarkable exception to this rule was observed by M. Bravais, 

 at Altenfiord, in Finmark, between lat. 70° and 71° N. 

 An ancient water-level, indicated by a sandy deposit forming 

 a terrace, and by marks of the erosion of the waves, can be 

 followed for thirty miles from south to north along the 

 borders of a fiord rising gradually from a height of eighty-five 

 feet to an elevation of 220 feet above the sea, or at the rate 

 of about four feet in a mile.f 



To pass to another and very remote part of the world, we 



* Observations sur les Phcnomenes f Proceedings of the Geological 

 d'^^rosion en Norwege, 1857. Society, 1845, vol. iv. p. 9i. 



