Sir H. H. Hoivorth — The Baltic — The Ancylus Sea. 351 



let me support the position I am maintaining by an appeal to two of 

 my old masters, whom I have tried to imitate at least in one respect, 

 namely, by a patient and laborious exploration of these asar on the 

 spot, and not in the method by which the German philosopher made 

 his camel. 



First, Murchison, who had no doubt about the asar having been 

 the products of aqueous and not of ice action. Murchison refers to 

 the shells of the Baltic Sea as previously mentioned by Lyell as 

 occurring in a blue clay beneath the great mass of asar drift, 

 indicating in the clearest manner a submarine condition when the 

 drift was transported (Q.J.G.S., iii, p. 365). Again, he says, "In 

 the sandy and gravelly beds of the as on which the castle of Upsala 

 stands Mr. Macklin found several species of shells, including the 

 Tellina balthica ; other argillaceous beds of blue clay which occupy 

 the banks of the river, on either side of which the asar rise up, are 

 also in some spots absolutely loaded with this shell, showing that 

 the whole base of the soft and overlying formations is truly of 

 aqueous origin of no very distant date, the shells being specifically 

 the same as those now living in the adjacent Baltic and exhibiting 

 their nacre perfectly preserved" (id., p. 369). 



Lyell in describing the asar of Sweden says they were certainly 

 produced under the sea. They usually consist of stratified 

 sand and gravel, the layers being often at high inclinations, 

 but where they are composed of boulders no stratification is 

 observable. After a long search he says he found shells in a layer 

 of marl in a ridge near Upsala, about 12 feet below the summit of 

 the ridge and 80 above the sea. The shells are the commonest 

 now in the Baltic. On the summit of the ridge he noticed angular 

 masses of gneiss and granite from 9 to 16 feet long, which had 

 evidently been lodged lohen the ridge was submarine. 



Elsewhere he speaks more definitely. 



"In Sweden," he says, "in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 Upsala, I observed in 1834 a ridge of stratified sand and gravel, 

 in the midst of which occurs a layer of marl, evidently formed 

 originally at the bottom of the Baltic by the slow growth of the 

 mussel, cockle, and other marine shells of living species intermixed 

 with some proper to fresh water. The marine shells are all of 

 dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the brackish waters of the 

 Baltic ; and the marl, in which myriads of them are embedded, is 

 now raised more than a hundred feet above the level of the Gulf of 

 Bothnia. Upon the top of this ridge (one of those called osars in 

 Sweden) repose several huge erratics, consisting of gneiss, for the 

 most part unrounded, from 9 to 16 feet in diameter, and which 

 must have been brought into their present position since the time 

 when the neighbouring gulf was already characterized by its peculiar 

 fauna. Here, therefore, we have proof that the transport of erratics 

 continued to take place, not merely when the sea was inhabited by 

 the existing testacea, but when the North of Europe had already 

 assumed that remarkable feature of its physical geography which 

 separates the Baltic from the North Sea, and causes the Gulf of 



