Sir H. H. Hotcorth — Surface Geology of N. Europe. 205 



the same kind occurring elsewhere. The asar are only heaped-up 

 ramparts of materials which occur in the areas lying between them 

 ill a less prominent fashion, in some cases as scattered boulders, iu 

 others as continuous beds of sand and gravel and brickearth. 

 Especially is this so with the brickearth or loam which often forms 

 their upper layers. This is really part of the continuous mantle of 

 the country. Such different deposits occur virtually at all levels. 

 How is river action to account for these complementary phenomena? 

 Rivers cannot spread over a whole country so vast as Sweden. They 

 ■would cease to be rivers, and would become quite transcendental, 

 like Baron Munchausen's dreams, and if. they did so they would 

 interfere with each other's beds, and the ramparts would have been 

 levelled down. It is clear that in finding an efficient cause for the asar 

 we must find one which will also explain the deposit of the drift 

 occurring outside them. Apart from and altogether beyond these 

 difficulties is the supreme meteorological objection as to whence the 

 rainfall was to come to fill these stupendous rivers, running parallel 

 to one another, quite near together, and forming such a web 

 of rivers as was never seen elsewhere. Where is the gathering- 

 ground and where are the watersheds which could produce such 

 a congeries of rivers ? This is an important matter to those among 

 us who believe in inductive methods in science. It is apparently 

 of no consequence to those geological alchemists who are continually 

 engaged in extracting palm-oil out of paving-stones. We cannot 

 understand any meteorological or physical change which could 

 supply the necessary rainfall for such rivers. 



On every possible ground, therefore, known to me it seems quite 

 impossible to connect the asar with river action. This is not my 

 view onljf ; it was the view of my master, Murchison, also. He 

 says : " However it may be argued that in mountainous tracts 

 torrential rivers and their feeders may have descended as they do 

 now, and may thus have produced rounded materials in valleys, 

 the argument is, at all events, perfectly inapplicable to the formation 

 of the Swedish asar. These linear ridges have not only been 

 accumulated in long trainees and lengthened mounds on terraces 

 high above the valleys, but offer appearances entirely unlike those 

 produced by rivers." 



This view is, in fact, also endorsed by Professor James G-eikie 

 in regard to suhaerial rivers. He saj's : " Banks of gravel and 

 sand no doubt accumulate in the beds of rivers, but if the rivers 

 were to disappear such banks would not form prominent ridges 

 rising abruptly above the general level of the sui-rounding land. 

 They would, moreover, coincide thi-oughout any course with the 

 lowest level of the valley, but our asar, although the}'' trend 

 with the general inclination of the land, do not slavishly follow 

 the line of lowest level, showing an independence of the minor 

 features of the ground, sometimes winding along one side of 

 a valley and sometimes along the other." (" Great Ice Age," p. 169.) 



While Professor Geikie rejects Tomebohm's theory of the asar 

 having been the result of the action of subaerial rivers, he is willing 



