62 GRINDING POWER OF GLACIERS. 



where none were before, he takes for granted what I never did 

 "■rant. On the contrary, I have always shunned the extreme views 

 of either geological school, which would assign the origin of all 

 physical features alone to the causes of which they are the advocate. 

 I believe, and consider that in my paper I made it clear, that as a 

 glacier outpour in approaching the coast, or in falling from an 

 elevation, always takes the line of least resistance ; so in former 

 times it sought the valleys and depressions then existing in the 

 coast-line of Greenland. It might even have taken the " gulches " 

 and ravines which former volcanic force had formed. But at that 

 time Greenland, Norway, and other fjord-indented countries did 

 not present the aspect they do now. Fjords, as we understand 

 them now, did not then exist. It was to the long-continued action 

 of the glaciers moving over these valley-beds that the deep uniform 

 inlets are due. Probably the sea assisted the glacier after the 

 coast had fallen, but that the sea alone cut out these fjords no one 

 who knows anything of the action of the waves on a coast-line can 

 for a moment entertain. If the rocks along a coast were alternately 

 soft and hard in parallel lines, then the sea by wearing away the 

 soft and leaving the hard, might accomplish the feat of forming- 

 fjords. But as no coast is formed on this plan, then it must fullow 

 that either the shore is equally worn away, according to the force 

 of the waves, or cut here and there into bays, of the rocks out of it. 

 At that time the present coast-line of these continents did not 

 exist, and when Mr. Tayler attempts to disprove my theory by 

 talking of the present fjords of Greenland as if they were of 

 primeval origin, I fear that he does not clearly understand the 

 doctrines held by all geologists, that the Greenland coast has been 

 undergoing a continual oscillation. He mixes up, with a curious 

 confusion of ideas, the fjords after they are formed and the causes 

 which formed them. A moment's consideration would convince 

 any one that the coast of Greenland at that time was entirely 

 different from now, and that since these fjords have been formed it 

 has undergone many changes of level. 



2. Grinding Power of Glaciers. — When Mr. Tayler and Sir Boderick 

 Murchison inform us that ice has no abrading power, and only slides 

 over the rock, they will scarcely expect me to agree with them. 

 This question is as yet sub juclice, though I am inclined to believe 

 that those who assert the grinding power of ice have made out a 

 very clear case. I cannot understand how any one who has seen 

 the rounded ice-planed hills of Greenland, and the immense mud- 

 laden stream which flows out from under every large glacier, as the 

 result of the grinding action of the ice, by means of its file-like 



