Sir R. S. Roworth — Surface Geology of N, Europe. 261 



removed by their being rubbed down by the sea," etc. (Bull. Geol. 

 Soo. France, 1846, p. 97.) R. Chambers, writing in 1850, after 

 speaking of the angular drift of Sweden as the result of glacial 

 action, continues : " This rubbish has afterwards been under the 

 sea, which, detaching certain portions, has worked the stones into 

 round forms, separated the sand and clay, and left the whole in 

 a new arrangement, namely, that of terraces with long branching 

 ridges or banks." These ridges he connects with the Irish eskers 

 and the Scotch kames, but says they are specially characteristic of 

 Sweden, where they extend for hundreds of miles without any 

 regard to the interruption of lakes or .rivers, sometimes thirty, 

 sometimes fifty, and occasionally not much less than a hundred feet 

 in height above the base ; and he attributes them to the agitations of 

 a sea which had succeeded to the reign of the glacial influence. 

 (" Tracings in the North of Europe," p. 238, etc.) Erdmann, 

 writing in 1868, accepts the conclusions of Martins and Chambers, 

 and speaks of the asar as " d'anciennes jetees litorales accumulees 

 et remaniees par la mer " (" Expose," etc., p. 42). This view is 

 a good deal more rational than that which attributes the asar to the 

 operation of rivers, subglacial or otherwise. 



We can hardly account for the formation of the boulders which 

 make up so large a portion of the asar except by the intervention of 

 the sea. These boulders are, so far as my experience goes, quite 

 different to river shingle. Their enormous and portentous number, 

 their widespread distribution, the very hard crystalline rocks out of 

 which they have been rolled and fashioned, all testify in a most 

 effective manner to the operations of a turbulent sea on a shallow 

 bottom acting upon the debris of crystalline rocks, and acting for 

 a long time. They bespeak, in fact, a period of long depression. 

 Thej seem to me to be the complementary phenomenon to the 

 polished and rounded surfaces of Scandinavia, to have been fashioned 

 at the same time, and to have been, in fact, the main instruments in 

 the hands of the sea in rounding and polishing these surfaces, being 

 themselves rounded in the process. They present as few traces of 

 ice-action as cannonballs or Beecham's pills do. 



Secondly, the sands which form the so-called sand asar, and form 

 also conspicuous beds in other asar which are nearly always, if not 

 always, stratified and false- bedded, seem to me to be marine sands, 

 and nothing else. I cannot in any way distinguish them from well- 

 known barren marine sands elsewhere, and notably those of Dalecarlia, 

 which occur there sometimes as asar and sometimes as thick and 

 well-stratified beds covering a wide extent of country. These wide- 

 spread stratified sands of Dalecarlia and their lessons were especially 

 noted by Murchison. " In approaching Hedraora," he says, " or 

 ascending to "that town, which lies about 150 or 200 feet above 

 the Eiver Dal Elf, the whole tract is one of undulating hilly sands 



. . . . resembling the bottom of a former sea In 



approaching Sater these sands, constituting linear asar here and 

 there united by cross bands or bars; are covered by worn boulders and 

 gravel, and further on the asar are entirely composed of water- worn 



