26S 



NA TURE 



\yan. 2 1, 1886 



the Segama, he was forced to return to the mouth of the 

 Kinabatangan and go down the coast to the Segama, 

 where his mission was to search for gold. The accident 

 which brought his Hfe to an end took place a considerable 

 distance up this river, while he was still ascending it. This, 

 in the barest outline, represents Mr. Hatton's geographical 

 work in Borneo ; his mineralogica! work was carried on 

 simultaneously. The difficulties of all kinds which he suc- 

 ceeded in overcoming — and they were neither few nor 

 small — are recorded in his diaries and letters. These 

 represent an amount of work rarely done by young men 

 who have barely reached their majority ; and this was 

 only the earnest of what he would have accomplished 

 had his life been spared. It is interesting to notice that, 

 according to the latest official reports from North Borneo, 

 gold had been found in small quantities on the .Segama 

 River at several places after Hatton's death. The pecu- 

 liarly painful circumstances under which he died have led 

 to the publication of much of a personal, and perhaps 

 somewhat temporary, interest, but his journals and 

 reports contain solid matter enough on this new British 

 possession to render the volume worth publishing on 

 wider and more general grounds. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



\7 he Editor does not hold himself 7-esponsihlef or opinions exprcsseil 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonyjuons covimunications, 



\_The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to iiisitre the appearance even 

 of communications containing intei-estijTQ and iioTel facts. '\ 



On ■■ Seter," " Strandlinjer," or Parallel Roads in 

 Central Norway 



I SKND you a copy of a paper from the Archiv for Malhe- 

 matik og Naturvidtnskab, Band 10, ''Omseter eller strandlinjer 

 i store holder over havet." As I here describe, as existing in a 

 great part of Ceutral Norway, a phenomenon quite analogous 

 to the famous parallel roads of Lochaber, and also make an 

 attempt towards the solution of the much-discussed question of 

 the origin of these shelves, an abstract will perhaps be of some 

 interest lo your readers. 



The Norwegian roads I have seen are all situated on llie 

 southern side of what geography- books call the Dovrefjeld. In a 

 great many, if not all, of the valleys originating here, especially 

 inGlomdalen, which the railroad from Christiania to Trondhjem 

 foUous, and in Foldalen and Rendalen, one to three horizontal 

 shelves are to be seen on both sides, with all the peculiarities 

 described by MacCulloch, &c., from Lochaber. Perhaps, how- 

 ever, the shelves do not slope so much against the valley, and 

 the detritus in it is more worn than in the common till. But 

 there is another more significant diiiference. Not only at a single 

 point, as noted from Glen Spean, but for several kilometres — 

 e.g. in Rendalen — the rock appears as a vertical wall on the 

 inner side, giving the road an aspect exactly like the well-known 

 strandlinjer from our coasts. Such rock-shelves alternate in 

 the same road with the more common detrita! shelves, just as in 

 the raised beaches near the sea. In Norwegian they are called 

 scte, pi. seter, viz. " what one sits upon." 



Their horizontality requires, as in Lochaber, a water-level as 

 an accompanying factor in their formation. But here in Nor- 

 way this can certainly not have been the sea, as advocated by 

 Darwin for the roads in Lochaber. Their height is from 657 

 to 1090 metres, and while the land stood only iSo metres lower 

 than now, the central part of the country was yet covered by a 

 mer-de-glace of very considerable bulk, up to 650 metres, which 

 certainly must have destroyed such superficial formations as 

 these detritus roads. Several other arguments may also be 

 brought forward against their marine origin. In Lochaber the 

 coincidence in height of the roads and the cols leading east- 

 ward has settled the question that it must have been in local 

 dammed lakes that the shelves originated. 



In Norway such a coincidence with cols is not as yet evidently 

 demonstrated, but the elevations already linown make it quite 

 probable. The main rivers in tlie examined tract are the 



Glommen (the greatest river in Norway) and its affluent, the 

 Folia. The cols at their sources are 664 metres and 950 metres 

 high, and with these heights agree very nearly eijjlu setei- and 

 three great teriaces at different places in Glomdalen, and two 

 seter and one terrace in Foldal. This result and some others in 

 accordance with it were mainly obtained by measurements with 

 the aneroid during a single week last summer, and I cannot 

 therefore but take it for granted that a closer examinatiun will 

 find corresponding cols to all seter. 



The great question here, as in Lochaber, is. What has dammed 

 up these great lakes, which attain a length of 280 kilometres 

 and a depth of more than 300 metres? Tlie difficulties which 

 beset any theory supposing detrilal obstacles are still more in- 

 surmountable here than in Scotland. .Vbout 1000 feet to be 

 removed without traces for every great valley ! At the highest 

 Site (1090 metres) in the Rondane Mountains it is necessary to 

 liuild up detritus dams almost all round, as the present environs 

 will not contribute much. Against Agassiz's glacier theory in 

 the form adopted by Jamieson there is advanced the very 

 vigorous objection that a glacier from any neighbouring valley 

 would certainly not be forced up against the opposite side of the 

 valley to the required height when its way up and down the glen 

 was free ; besides which the ends of glaciers are generally very 

 much creviced, and there must have been glaciers in all the 

 valleys if in any. To this powerful argument from Milne Home 

 and others there maybe added for the Norwegian seter that any 

 ]iurely local obstruclion in several parallel valleys at about 

 61° 40' N. — the southern boundary of -the sete region — is not 

 very probable. 



Where, then, is the required dam to be found ? Both in 

 Lochaber and in the sele region of Central Norway we meet 

 with the same remarkable glacial phenomenon : the stria? go 

 upwards against the drainage. The boulder transport makes 

 this an indisputable fact for a great part of Glomdalen. From 

 this it is a certain deduction that the glacier-shed has not fol- 

 lowed the watershed. In Scotland the glacier-marks go higher 

 in the western part than to the east of Lochaber, and as the 

 precipitation is also greater here the originally higher part of 

 the mer-de-glace to the west must certainly have persisted for the 

 longest time. By the great ablation the outer margin of the 

 nap shrank from the east coast, gradually retreating up the 

 Great Glen and Strath Spey, »S:c., towards the corner between 

 the highest mountains in Scotland, where the last rest must 

 have lingered rather long. This last i-estof the inland ice was, 

 I presume, that which formed the block, gradually damming up 

 lakes as it sank below or shrank behind the cols. That it was 

 solid enough as it lay there as a mighty bulk without crevices, 

 which are only caused by movement, can hardly be doubted. 

 The dying rest perhaps sent also relatively slowly-moving 

 glaciers almost to the last straight up the glens in the same 

 direction as the strise till. 



In Norway the last rest of the great inland ice may be sup- 

 posed to have persisted where the greatest thickness had been, 

 viz. below the glacier-shed. This can be found by the assist- 

 ance of the southern limit of the north-going stride, which, as 

 might be expected, coincides very well with the known southern 

 limit of the seter, with the exception of a few observations of 

 strise which a later examination may prove erroneous as to the 

 direction. This line is in Gudbrandsdalen, Osterdalen, &c., 

 200 to 300 km. south of the watershed, and is at a still greater 

 distance in Jemtland, in .Sweden. This somewhat surprising 

 result agrees perfectly on closer examination with the oro- 

 graphical and climatological probability, and may also be 

 directly deduced from the glacial physics, but this I cannot here 

 demonstrate to its full extent. 



Between this last ice-rest and the watershed now lies this 

 peculiar row of grand glacier lakes, which may be traced up to 

 Swedish Lapland, though as yet no seter are known farther 

 north than Jemtland. Everywhere this tract is distinguished 

 from other highland valleys by its astonishing terraces. In 

 these, now and then, is found a finely-laminated clay, which 

 elsewhere is confined to the niveau below 500 feet, the old sea- 

 level. This is the case not only in Osterdalen and Jemtland, 

 but in Swedish Lapland up to 1400 feet, to the great perplexity 

 of the older geologists of Sweden (such as Erdmann), who, con- 

 vinced that this clay could only be formed in the sea, were 

 forced to suppose a former, else improbable, sinking of the land 

 to this extent. Its deposition in our great glacial lakes is 

 quite natural. 



The conclusions these jrftr — beaches of great height— lead to as 



