148 PROFESSOR EDWARD HULL, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., P.G.S., ON 



action" may also be illustrated by the Glarafoss, the foss of the 

 Glara, a mile or more above the mouth of the river, only reached 

 after a painful and heavy trudge over the said beds of moraine, 

 which crunch under the feet, and where the river thunders down ;t, 

 narrow and steep chasm. Yet a few hundred yards farther on and 

 the stream is hemmed in here in the middle of July by a regular 

 penthouse of drift snow, and I have no doubt issues from a glacier, 

 and deepens its course in its constant and forceful cascade. 



4. (p. 137) Perched Blocks and Bidders. — I noticed such a huge 

 perched boulder of a d liferent formation from that of the sur- 

 i-ounding rocks in the Krisuvik desert in the south of Iceland. 

 Its lodgment there is no doubt duo to prehistoric glacial action, 

 but on my inquiry of the under-gu.ide as to how it came there, his 

 reply was, " Gretlir's work." All such matters are set down to the 

 surpassing sti'ength of the national hero of Iceland. 



5. (p. 137) In the case of Scotland, in the entire disappearance of 

 Glaciers. — But the case of Iceland is far more analogous to that 

 of Norway. Here the glaciers have not disappeared but have 

 retreated into the higher valleys of the interior mountains. The 



now mountains in the north of Iceland are farther inland and 

 cannot be belield from the coasting steamer like those in the south. 

 Glacial action in the south is doing that, if I am not mistaken, 

 now, which glacial action in the north did in a prehistoric age. 

 Stand on the shore of Heimaerg (Home Island) the only inhabited 

 one of the whole group of the Westmann Islands, and gaze north- 

 wards to the south coast of Iceland, and a perfect panorama of snow 

 peaks will be beheld in succession, those of the Eyjafjadla jokuU^ 

 the Myrdals jokull, and the Oraefa jokull, with their glittering 

 pinnacles of ice spiring aloft into the cloudless arctic skies — ■ 

 inland, though not seemingly so, because the intervening lands 

 between the base of said mountains and the coast only present a 

 dead level. 



6. There is great philosophical significance in the term that the 

 Icelander applies to his snow mountains in several cases and to 

 some of hi:s islands. Alone, stationary and immovable, Avhereas 

 glaciers slip down, fjords are carved out, rivers wear down the 

 rocks, Askja (the name for a bandbox in Iceland, or any circular 



* Or Vestmannaeyjar on Thoroddseu's map. 



