The Glacial Era 5 



Europe was covered by an impenetrable sheet or sea of 

 ice. When, for example, starting from close upon our 

 most southern latitudes, there was not a green thing to 

 be seen between those latitudes and the pole. The 

 southern limit of this huge glacier would lie, for our 

 islands, a little way from the southern coast of England; 

 on the Continent, at about the latitude of Dresden or 

 Cracow ; eastward the snow region spread as far as 

 Nijni Novgorod or as Voronej ; westward it covered the 

 whole bed of the North Sea, the whole of our islands 

 (except the strip just spoken of) and pushed on into the 

 Atlantic some little way beyond the present limits of 

 the Hebrides and of Ireland. Then, in the course of 

 Nature, the great ice-age slowly passed away. The 

 glaciers began to melt and to transform themselves 

 into the floods which have hollowed out the sreat 

 river-beds of Northern Europe, until at last they re- 

 mained only in the high lands. This change took 

 place last in Scandinavia, which, therefore, longer than 

 any country, retained its covering of ice. 



After that in other lauds life had begun; when lichens 

 had begun to grow upon the rocks, and duckweed in 

 the swamps ; as these in course of time gave place to 

 grass and herbs, and the herbs developed into trees, and 

 animal life came to re-inhabit the awakened earth, in 

 Scandinavia the awful stillness of the ice-fields re- 

 mained — their utter solitude and deprivation of even 

 the germs of life. This is what I mean when I say 

 that, even in the annals of Nature, Norway and Sweden 

 may be reckoned the youngest among the countries of 

 Europe. 



This history of Scandinavia in the glacial age is the 



