126 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



needs be impossible farther out than at the innermost fjord heads 

 The greatest distance between the heads of any two neighboring 

 fjords on the whole Norwegian coast is only about 6o kilometers 

 (less than 40 miles), and an ice stream c^riven out over this neck 

 between Sognefjord and Nordfjord could not by any means reach 

 a height of 510 meters at the isles in the mouth of Sognefjord, 

 where we find glacial grooves and foreign boulders 1,760 meters, 

 5,700 feet above the fjord bottom. With only 20 to 30 kilometers 

 to discharging outlets on each side, its thickness would ever be 

 small. The fact must be kept in view that the inland ice behind, 

 from which the ice stream flowed, had only a very inconsidera- 

 ble breadth. The distance from the fjord heads to the present 

 watershed is nowhere more than 30 kilometers, and the want of 

 boulders transported from the country more to the east proves 

 that the ice-shed, the glacial divide at the glacial period, could 

 not have been situated far from the watershed. Now a neve less 

 than 30 kilometers broad could never have pushed a continuous 

 margin beyond a close set row of deep fjords. As we now in 

 southern Norway actually find the whole west coast, except the 

 highest points, very strongly glaciated, we are forced to admit 

 that the only state of things in which the ice could have advanced 

 so far west is to be found in a country where depressions, of a 

 volume in any degree comparable with the present fjord system, 

 are wanting. We are obliged to ascribe the formation of our 

 fjords to Quaternary forces — that is, glacial erosion. 



We know that boulders from the Kristiania fjord are found 

 in the till as far away as North Netherlands and at Holderness, 

 in England. We further know that the east-going ice flow in 

 Scotland was turned back in Sutherland and that Orkney and 

 Shetland were glaciated from the east, i. e., from Norway. A 

 continuous inland ice could not have grown gradually across the 

 deep Norwegian channel, which encircles southern Norway, the 

 deep sea basin reaching 900 meters. As in the case of the fjords, 

 we must also conclude that this fjord-like basin (which indeed 

 does not reach the depth of some of the fjords) did not exist in 

 preglacial times, but owes its origin to the ice stream that flowed 



