Sir H. H. Howortli — Geological History of the Baltic. 461 



covered with its dead shells, and it would seem almost certain tliat 

 this extinction of the shell was due to some uplift having interfered 

 with the Arctic water reaching that latitude in sufficient quantity. 

 Apart from this, the depth at which these dead shells are found (in 

 an area where the latest movements have been those of elevation) 

 shows that the Yoldia when living in Norway lived at a very much 

 greater depth than that suggested by Dr. Brogger as a necessity of 

 its life. 



There is another fact which is equally or still more impressive in 

 this behalf. We owe this notable piece of evidence to the researches 

 of Sars. He describes a famcus reef near Drobak, south of 

 Christiania, with an area of some 100 kilometres. This is in places 

 submerged to the depth of several fathoms, and in others it rises above 

 the sea at Barholmen, Kuholmen, etc., to a height of 30 metres above 

 the water-level. This reef is covered with a great deposit of the 

 dead coral Lophohelia {Oculina) prolifera, which is bush-shaped and 

 forms growths two feetin diameter and is accumulated in vast masses. 

 It cannot have been washed thither by the tide or a stream, for it is 

 firmly attached to the solid rock just as it grew. Although it only 

 occurs dead here, it is found living at vast depths in the deeper 

 fjords. Sars says at 150 to 200 fathoms, i.e. 900 to 1,200 feet more 

 or less. A. M. Norman found it in Bokkenfjord and Korsrjord at 

 a depth of 80 fathoms. Sars and Brogger both claim for its habitat 

 a very great depth. With it occur the very interesting shell Lima 

 excavata, together with Pecten vitreus, Area nodtdosa, Carditim 

 minimum, Waldheimia cranium, Terelratella Spitsbergensis, and T. caput- 

 serpentis^ 



This is a clear proof that when the coral was living the depth 

 of the Christiania Fjord at Drobak must have been quite great 

 enough to admit the Arctic current into that gulf, which then 

 extended as we have seen in a great inlet as far as the Malar Sea 

 and including the Cattegat, the peninsula of Vendsyssel, the great 

 lakes of Wettern and Wenerii, of Mjosen and the Malar Sea, in 

 whose depths we have a number of still living relics of the same 

 cold conditions once prevailing there. 



In conclusion, I wish, among other things, to emphasize in these 

 pages that the moUnscan contents of the raised beaches completely 

 confirm the geological evidence of the very recent, continuous, and 

 cataclysmic uprise of Scandinavia and of the sea bottom round its 

 coasts, thus affording a complete parallel to the similar rise of the 

 other great peninsula of Greenland which I have described else- 

 where. One or two consequent results I have no space at 

 present to enlarge upon and can merelj"- mention. One is that the 

 breaking of the Baltic breach created a complete gap in the history 

 of the fauna and flora of Scandinavia, which from that date to our 

 own can have altered very slightly and adventitiously ; and secondly 

 that the rise of such a mass of land in these high latiUides must have 

 considerably lowered the temperature and affected the internal 

 distribution of the jdant and animal life in both of which respects 

 the evidence of hiology completely concurs. I hope to enlarge on 

 these issues and to apply directly the arguments here used to Britain 

 on some other occasion. 



