TEE FORMATION OF COAL. 89 



enters the termination of the fjord, and which, from their 

 exceptional fertility, constitute small agricultural settle- 

 ments bearing these names, which signify the river sands 

 of Laerdal, Sundal, etc. These deposits stretch out into 

 the fjord, forming extensive shallows that are steadily grow- 

 ing and advancing further and further into the fjord. One 

 of the most remarkable examples of such deposits is that 

 brought by the Storelv (or Justedals Elv), which flows down 

 the Justedal, receiving the outpour from its glaciers, and 

 terminates at Marifjoren. When bathing here I found an 

 extensive sub-aqueous plain stretching fairly across that 

 branch of the Lyster fjord into which the Storelv flows. 

 The waters of the fjord are whitened to a distance of two 

 or three miles beyond the mouth of the river. These de- 

 posits must, if the present conditions last long enough, 

 finally extend to the body, and even to the mouth, of the 

 fjords, and thus cover the whole of the bottom vegetable 

 bed with a stratified rock in which will be entombed, and 

 well preserved, isolated specimens of the trees and other 

 vegetable forms corresponding to those accumulated in a 

 thick bed below, but which have been lying so long in the 

 clear waters that they have become sodden ed into homo- 

 geneous vegetable pulp.or mud, only requiring the pressure 

 of solid superstratum to convert them into coal. 



The specimens of trees in the upper rock, I need scarcely 

 add, would be derived from the same drifting as that which 

 produced the lower pulp; but these coming into the water 

 at the period of its turbidity and of the rapid deposition of 

 mineral matter, would be sealed up one by one as the 

 mineral particles surrounding it subsided. Fossils of es- 

 tuarine animals would, of course," accompany these, or of 

 fresh-water animals where, instead of a fjord, the scene of 

 these proceedings is an inland lake. In reference to this I 

 may state that at the inner extremities of the larger Nor- 

 wegian fjords the salinity of the water is so slight that it is 

 imperceptible to taste. I have freely quenched my thirst 

 with the water of the Sorf jord, the great inner branch of 

 the Hardanger, where pallid specimens of bladder wrack 

 were growing on its banks. 



In the foregoing matter-of-fact picture of what is pro- 



