RAMSAY, DANA, GEIKIE, AND MURPHY, ON FJORDS. 69 



that I am adopting other men's ideas, I hasten to say I have 

 recently learned that, without exactly explaining the formation of 

 fjords as I have done, both Professors Dana and Eainsay had some 

 years previously hinted at a similar explanation ; and more recently, 

 Dr. Archibald Geikie, Murchison Professor of Geology in the 

 University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Geological Survey 

 of Scotland, has suggested that possibly the " lochs " on the west 

 coast of Scotland might be so accounted for. Though none of these 

 gentlemen took exactly the same view as I have done, or gave it 

 such a general application, yet I am glad to have the support of men 

 so able as they. I may be, therefore, excused if I add them as 

 supporters of the glacier-bed theory of fjords. 



Professor Eamsay * says : " Furthermore, as the glacialated sides 

 and bottoms of the Norwegian fjords and of the salt-water lochs of 

 Scotland seem to prove, each of these arms of the sea is only 

 the prolongation of a valley down which a glacier flowed, and 

 was itself filled with a glacier. ... In parts of Scotland, some 

 of these lochs being deeper in places than the neighbouring sea, I 

 incline to attribute this depth to the grinding power of the ice 

 that of old flowed down the valleys, when, possibly, the land may 

 have been higher than now." Professor Geikie gives utterance to 

 very similar views. 2 More recently still, Mr. J. Murphy, in a 

 paper read to the Geological Society, 3 some months after mine was 

 read to the Eoyal Geographical Society, apparently in entire ig- 

 norance of the writings of his predecessors, gives utterance to views 

 even more decided regarding the part glaciers have played in the 

 formation of fjords. His words are worth quoting: "Not many 

 coasts in the world are cut up into fjords ; and nearly all that are 

 so are western coasts in high latitudes. The fjord-formation is 

 found in North-Western Europe, including Norway, the West of 

 Scotland, and the West of Ireland ; in North America from Van- 

 couver Island northward, and in South America from the Island of 

 Chiloe southward. From Vancouver Island to Chiloe is an im- 

 mense stretch of nearly straight coast-line ; but, at these limits, its 

 character changes quite abruptly. The transition from straight to 

 indented coast-lines coincides pretty equally with that from dry 

 to moist climates ; and the change from the dry climate of Chili 

 to the moist one of Western Patagonia is accompanied, as we might 

 expect, by a depression of the snow-line on the Andes. It is now 

 generally believed that the prevalence of lakes in high latitudes is, 



On. cit., vol. xviii. p. 203. 



' Scenery of Scotland,' pp. 127, 183, &c. 



■ Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' vol. xxv. p. 354. 



