68 RAMSAY, DANA, GE1K1E, AND MURPHY, ON FJORDS. 



by illustrious names, so well founded as to be unassailable. It is, 

 to say the least of it, very remarkable, if fjords were owing to vol- 

 canic action, that they are not, as we might expect, found in countries 

 where there has been the most remarkable display of igneous 

 agency, or in countries where volcanic agency is equally well marked 

 with those countries in which fjords are found. On the contrary, 

 fjords are only found in northei-n and southern latitudes, where 

 glaciers either now form or could have formed, and nowhere 

 else ; so that they must in some way be connected with climatal 

 agencies. Again, these fjords are only in the line towards the 

 sea, and always end at the shore, as if the agent which formed 

 them had been like a glacier making its way to the sea. A 

 volcanic rift is entirely different, and would never have shown 

 such a steady, uniform system of openings in the earth's surface. 

 If some great subterranean force had formed these openings in 

 the earth's crust we might have expected to find them on flats, 

 in mountains, in sandy tracts, in fact, anywhere — for a great 

 subterranean force would have risen the crust of the earth without 

 regard to locality. The fjords we always find surrounded by 

 mountains. Much more could be said, but it would be a mere waste 

 of time ; for it must already be evident that, whatever agency has 

 formed these fjords, volcanic agency alone is not the one. I, with 

 all deference to my distinguished opponents, still think that the 

 glacier-bed theory is not untenable, in default of a better. 



6. Bamsay, Dana, Geihie, and Murphy, on Fjords. — -The views I have 

 enunciated, both here and elsewhere, regarding the action of Arctic 

 glaciers and glacier fjords, were first suggested to me when visiting 

 both sides of Baffin Bay and Davis Strait as early as 1861. I after- 

 wards thought a great deal on the subject, during some years of a 

 lonely life, far away from scientific works or intercourse, while explor- 

 ing the wild fjord-indented shores of British Columbia and Vancouver 

 Island. 2 Afterwards I saw enough in Greenland and Norway to 

 convince me that my early ideas had the germ of truth in them, and 

 that former writers, who attributed the formation of these to vol- 

 canic rifts alone, were not on the right track. I have accordingly, 

 in the course of the foregoing remarks, occasionally styled this 

 " my theory," for, until recently, I was unaware that the idea 

 had ever suggested itself to any one else. Though to me it is 

 a matter of perfect indifference who was the author of it, so 

 long as it is founded on truth, yet, in case it might be supposed 



2 See my " Das Innere der Vancouver Insel " (with map) in Petermann's 

 ' Geographische Mittheilungen,' 1869, and 'Vancouver Island Explorations' 

 (V. I. Colonial Blue-book, 1865). 



