456 * Geikie — Glaciation of Scotland and Norway, 



where each sort are found, and the other remams found along with 

 each, may throw some light on the subject ; and those who have the 

 means of doing this wiU, we trust, give the matter their best con- 

 sideration. 



nsroTiCES OIF isv^iEiyroii^s. 



I. — Notes foe a Compaeison of the Glaciation of the West 

 OF Scotland, with that of Aectic Norway. 



By Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., etc. 



[Proc. Eoy. Soc, Edin., Jan. 15, 1866]. 



IN June, 1865, the author, accompanied by two of his associates in 

 the Geological Siu'vey, Mr. W. Whitaker and Mr. James Geikie, 

 made an excursion to Norway, for the purpose of examining the glacial 

 phenomena of that country, and to search for any facts that might 

 help to throw light upon the history of the glacial period in the 

 British Isles. 



The close resemblance between the general outline of Scotland and 

 Scandinavia is well known, and this depends upon a close similarity 

 in the geological structrure of the rocks, and a coincidence in the 

 geological history of the surface of the two regions. Norway from 

 south to north, is almost wholly made up of metamoi-phic rocks, not 

 all of the same age, yet possessing a general similarity of character. 

 In like manner, the west of Scotland, from the Mull of Cantyre to 

 Cape Wrath, is, in great measure, built up of gneiss, schist, slate, 

 quartz-rock, granite, and other metamorphic rocks, quite comparable 

 with these of Norway. 



Besides the external resemblance due to the lithological nature of 

 the rocks, beneath there is a still further likeness dependent upon 

 similarity, partly of geological structure, and partly of denudation. 

 Many of the Scottish sea-lochs have had their trend determined by 

 lines of strike or of anticlinal axis, and the same result seems to 

 have taken place in Norway. In other cases, the lochs and glens of 

 the one country, and the fjords and valleys of the other, cannot be 

 traced to any detennining geological structure, but must be referred 

 to the great process of denudation which has brought the surface 

 to its present form. 



No one can attentively consider the maps of the countries between 

 the headlands of Connaught and the North Gape without being con- 

 vinced that the endless ramifying sea-lochs and fjords, kyles and 

 soimds, were once land-valleys. Each loch and fjord is the sub- 

 merged part of a valley, of which we still see the upper portion 

 above water ; and the simken rocks and skerries, islets and islands, 

 are all so many relics of the uneven surface of the old land. 



No feature of the Norwegian coast is more striking than the 

 universal smoothing and rounding of the rocks, which is now 



