May 1, 1886.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



207 



Lave all given rise to certain current sayings, but of no 

 more value than those I have given, and all, I think, based 

 upon illogical inferences. Snakes are claimed as excellent 

 barometers ; but the habits upon which the belief rests are 

 those that characterise every day of the creature's life. 

 Toads and frogs are largely depended upon, but a careful 

 record for a single season will show how little they are to 

 be trusted ; and even the fishes cannot disport themselves 

 in summer but straightway the clouds must open upon us, 

 a tornado visit us. or premature frosts balk the calculations 

 of the farmer. 



Curiously enough, I do not find that insect life has 

 entered to any important extent into the weather-lore of 

 this neighbourhood. Contradictory remarks are oftan made 

 as to ant-hills : thus, when they are very higli, it will be a 

 dry day ; others insist that it is evidence that it will soon 

 rain. Spiders' webs, also, are variously held as of baro- 

 metric value ; but a careful record of several summers 

 contradicts this emphatically. The positions of the paper- 

 liornets' nests, which in autumn are often prominent objects 

 in the country, after the foliage drops, are variously 

 asserted to be indicative of a " hard" or " open" winter, 

 as they chance to be placed in the upper or lower branches 

 of a tree. My scepticism as to the value of this sign 

 arises from the fact that there is, as might be expected, no 

 uniformity in the positions of any half-dozen such nests. — 

 Popular Science Monthly. 



COAL. 



By W. Mattiei" Williams. 



THE MEASDEES ABOVE AND BETWKEN TUE COAL. 



X my last I described the vegetable deposits that 

 are now occurring in the Norwegian fjords and 

 cei-tain lakes, and stated my re.isons for con- 

 cluding that such deposits must ultimately 

 become true coal seams ; that they present us 

 with an actual and natural demonstration of 

 how coal seams may be formed, and how they 

 probably were formed, during the carboniferous period, under 

 far more favourable conditions of climate, and therefore more 

 iMpidly and effectively. So far, I have only described the 

 operation of laying the trees on the beds of the lakes and 

 fjords, with no other covering than the water ; this, of 

 course, suggests an apparent diflerence between the pre.sent 

 and the j)ast, the ancient coal seams being buried under 

 deposits of mineral matter, so attached and connected with 

 them as to indicate that the action of vegetable deposition 

 and that of mineral deposition must have somehow been 

 alternate. Is there any such action at present proceeding 

 in connection with the present-day coal formation that I 

 have described % 



I am able to answer this question. Some typical cases 

 are supplied by the arms of the Sogne fjord, which I have 

 already mentioned as displaying good examples of the vege- 

 table avalanches. This great inlet has been well compared, 

 so for as gi-ound-plan outline is concerned, to the trunk of a 

 tree with many branches and twigs. The branches are the 

 lateral tjords, some of great depth and walled with perpen- 

 dicular rocks, such as the Xerij fjord ; others with steep 

 slopes, more or le.ss wooded. The twigs are the rivers or 

 torrents with which all th&se arms terminate, usually many 

 such torrents to each of the branches, and each torrent, of 

 course, flowing along the bottom of its own valley. 



One of the most magnificent of these valleys is the 

 Justedal. It is rarely visited by tourists, having no road- 

 way for carrioles and no stations. It proceeds upwards to 



the Justedalsbrae, the largest glacier ground in Europe (.500 

 square miles of ice), and the summit region of Scandina^^a, 

 the Jotunhjem (the home of the giants). I came upon this 

 valley from above, in 185G, after a rather adventurous 

 solitarj' walk (see " Through Norway with a Knapsack," 

 chapters x., xi., xii.), and on reaching the lower part of the 

 valley found a sudden and curious contrast to the desolation 

 of ice and snow and glaciated rock I had just left. This 

 change was due to the foot that I had now arrived at the 

 original terminal boundary of this arm of the fjord, the 

 ancient shores of which were as definitely marked as tliough 

 the water were still there. Instead of the water surface 

 there was a level plain richly cultivated with luxuriant 

 pastures and heavily-laden fruit trees. The cause of this 

 transformation is evident at a glance. The Storelv (the big 

 river) which starts from a gloomy, ice-bordered lake, the 

 Styggevand, and receives contributions from half a-dozen 

 glaciers, on its way down the Justedal, is turbid with rock 

 debris. So long as it continues its brawling course between 

 moraine boulders, the stiiTing keeps these particles sus- 

 pended, giving it the characteristic milky appearance of such 

 streams ; but when it reaches the calm water of the deep 

 fjord, these particles di'op to the bottom, cover the previous 

 deposit of fallen trees, and finally fill up the fjord to the 

 topmost level of its waters. I carefully traced this deposit 

 to the present shores of the fjord, and on bathing traced it 

 further still as an extensive subaqueous plain, stretching 

 right across this branch of the fjord. This plain being 

 covered with turbid water, its level will go on rising until it 

 will become high and dry and cultivated right across from 

 Eonnei, to Marifjilren on the opposite side. 



I have thus fully described this instance because it is a 

 characteristic example of what is going on more slowly and 

 less strikingly in every one of the thousands of terminal 

 branches of the Norwegian fjords. These plains are so 

 characteristic as physical features of Norway, that they 

 have received a special name, ();•, or, with the definite article 

 attached, Oren. Thus LaerdalsiJren, the sands of the 

 Laerdal ; Sundalsiiren, the sands of Sundal ; Bolstadiiren, 

 Dalsoren, Tiksuren, Gudvangsciren, <tc., ttc. They are 

 usually sandy, varying according to the rocks over which 

 the river flows and the degree of glaciation to which 

 they may have been subjected. Such deposit, of course, 

 covers the vegetable deposit that may have preceded 

 it at the bottom of the fjord, and it is continually, 

 though very slowly, advancing. If the present conforma- 

 tion and physical conditions continue for a few hundreds 

 of thousands of years, most of the Norwegian fjords 

 will be filled up and their places occupied b}' extended or. 

 They con-espond to the deltas which are formed when 

 rivers flow directly into the open sea. 



Lakes are similarlj- filled up ; the vegetable deposit of 

 the Achensee is being similarly silted over at the end 

 where the river enters. Such lakes are merely expansions 

 of the river itself where it comes upon a deep outstretch of 

 its valley. The shores of the Lake of Geneva have 

 advanced six miles from the original boundary of the 

 upper end of the lake, and, as Lyell says, " we may look 

 forward to the period when this lake will be filled up." 

 Similar examples might be multiplied indefinitely. 



The whole of the north-west coast of Norway, including 

 all the fjords that branch inward therefrom, and all the 

 valleys above the fjords, display a most inteiesting seri; s of 

 terraces. A steep slope of recent deposit, commonly glacial 

 '■ tOl," rises from the river at the valley bottom like a 

 railway embankment, then a flat, then another bank topped 

 by another level, and so on in a series of steps up to a 

 height of 600 feet above sea level. If any of my readers 

 visit Norway they should observe these. They are magni- 



