500 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
regard to the elevation of the land during the same periods. The 
reason is obvious, viz., that on the present surface we have evidence 
of the former subsidence, while the sea hides the land which once 
connected islands and continents. Positive proof of these connec- 
tions, and of their extent in time and space, are therefore much more 
difficult to produce. The impression left upon the casual student 
of these phenomena is therefore unavoidably that the glacial epoch 
was one of subsidence chiefly, consequently it cannot be too strongly 
emphasized, that while this is true to a great extent with regard to 
the later phases of the glacial time, it is not true of the early and 
middle stages. 
That there is ample proof of western Norway having had an 
altitude of at Jeast 180 meters higher than now since the megaglacial 
stage is conclusively shown by no less authority than Professor W. 
C. Brogger.t| The accumulations of littoral species of shells on 
the banks off the west coast of Norway at depths down to 180 meters 
or more demonstrate a corresponding elevation which, according to 
him, existed immediately before and possibly during the early 
stages of the second (Scandinavian) glaciation. He synchronizes 
this elevation with the one demonstrated by Judd and others from 
the Rockall bank, and by Jensen from the Feerdes, both of which 
indicate elevations of at least 180 meters: “ The entire material of 
observations anent these sunken littoral banks, with a fauna partly 
to a greater extent arctic, partly mixed, and partly southern, thus 
points to an extensive elevation of the sea bottom from Iceland, the 
Fzeroes, Rockall, Scotland, the Shetland Islands to the Norwegian 
coast during the last interglacial period” (p. 107). It should be 
noted, however, that both the reports of the Rockall expedition and 
of A. S. Jensen refer this elevation to the postglacial period, that is, 
to the time following the neoglaciation (second Scandinavian glacia- 
tion). This question, therefore, appears to the biographer as being 
still open, and it is so regarded in the following considerations. 
The most superficial study of the phenomena of the glacial epoch 
demonstrates that there were great changes of level, and more 
elaborate research establishes the fact that these changes not only 
vary locally in intensity, but that the rise and fall of the sea-level 
is not synchronous over the whole area affected. I need only men- 
tion what Knipowitsch says on the last page of his monumental 
“ Grundziige der Hydrologie des Europaischen Eismeeres (Zap. 
*Om de Senglaciale og Postglaciale Nivaaforandringer i Kristianiafeltet, in 
Norges Geol. Undersog., No. 31, 1900, pp. I00-III. 
