8 SEASONAL DEPOSITION IN AQUEO-GLACIAL SEDIMENTS. 
the north, and going as nearly as possible in the direction of the ice-recession. The main 
work was performed in four days; though the filling up of some lacune at difficult points 
could be performed only after several repeated attempts. 
“ Xmong the different results it may suffice here to mention, that I now finally got the 
conclusive proofs for the assumption that the individual “varves” had a very wide distribu- 
tion. Thus it was shown that it often exceeded some fifty km, and that the cubic-mass of 
the “varves” must be measured by millions of m*’. This together with their regular struc- 
ture definitively showed, that they could not be due to any local or accidental cause of smaller 
importance or less pronounced periodicity than the climatic period of the year. On the 
other hand, it seems equally impossible that every sharply marked varve should correspond 
to any hypothetical and, in every case, indistinctly limited series of years without showing 
any registration of the in fact so sharply accentuated period of the single year. Indeed, it 
seems to me quite as improbable that the melting-season of the land-ice should not put its 
stamp upon the annual sedimentation, as that this should not be the case with the annual 
period of vegetation in relation to the annual rings of the trees. 
“Tn the following year, with the assistance of partly the same staff of co-operators, the 
investigation was extended to the rest of the line 800 km in length between Skane (Scania) 
and that point of the late-glacial ice-shed —in S. Jimtland — where the last ice-remnant 
first became divided into two parts. Also this campaign was successful, though at several 
places lacunze had to be left for the moment. 
“However, the main thing was that the plan had been found to be quite performable 
even under such highly varying conditions as had been met with along this extended line, 
and that it now evidently was only a question of labour and patience, gradually to work out 
the chronological and climatical record almost as far into detail as might be wished. 
“Tn my later completion and correlation work it was a great pleasure to me to find how 
able and enthusiastic in their work my numerous young collaborators had been, and how 
good and reliable were their results. Never lacunae were left, where the difficulties had not 
really been too serious for the time available. 
“The natural conditions upon which the plan for the whole investigation was founded 
are the following. When the late-glacial land-ice receded from Sweden, the lower parts of 
the land were still depressed below the surface of the sea, and during the warm season of every 
year the melting-water from the surface of the great land-ice sank down through its crevasses 
and found its way along the bottom of the ice, where it was pushed forward under strong 
hydrostatic pressure, thereby sweeping away considerable masses of moraine-matter which 
were transformed into water-worn sediment. Where these overburdened rivers, at the _ 
steep border of the land-ice, reached the stagnant water of the sea, the subglacial river-tunnels 
widened rapidly into glacier-arches, and at the same time the rapidity and transporting 
power of the water slackened, thus causing a deposition of the great cobbles and the coarsest 
material at the innermost, proximal part of the arch, while, further out, smaller pebbles and 
gravel and ultimately almost only sand was deposited at the more distal part of such a sub- 
marginal delta in the very mouth of the arch. Still farther out in the sea off the ice-border 
the sand becomes thinner, finer, and more and more interstratified with clay-layers, which 
ultimately become dominant and free from sand. 
“Thus every ose-centre is nothing else than the proximal glacier-arch portion of an 
annual layer and, if this be compared to a fan, corresponds to the very handle of it. 
“Every year, by the melting during the warm season, followed also a recession of the 
steep ice-edge with the glacier-arch and its river-mouth. This retreat, on the whole quite 
dominating, was during winter-time somewhat counter-acted by a slight advance, at many 
places wonderfully well registered by the small, but well-marked winter-moraines. 
