Scandinavia and Finland. 357 



rounding of the surfaces of Western Norway, which have been so 

 generally and widely accepted as proofs of the former existence 

 of a great ice-sheet, is not well founded, and that this hypothetical 

 ice-sheet has had to do with this particular phenomenon as little or 

 as much as the west wind has. The fact is, that these polished and 

 rounded surfaces, when they occur on the coasts of Norway, on the 

 islands off its shores, and in the Lofoden Islands, and up to a certain 

 point only, are the measure, not of the potency of a former ice-sheet, 

 but of the amount of submergence to which the land has been 

 subjected in quite recent geological times. I am not the first to 

 make the observation, although I press it further than Pettersen did. 

 That well-known Norwegian geologist, who probably knew this coast 

 better than any other Scandinavian geologist, urged over and over 

 again that certain mammiilated surfaces and polished walls of rock 

 in Norway are clearly and definitely the result of marine and tidal 

 action, precisely similar to that going on wherever crystalline rocks 

 are subjected to the washing of the sea, and nothing more. This 

 is surely a very important and useful conclusion, and one which 

 decapitates many exotic adjectives which have found their way 

 into the literature of the Ice Age, and takes away one of the most 

 potent props of that very ricketty cripple the North Sea ice-sheet, 

 for it makes the Northern peninsula an even more inadequate 

 nursery land of great masses of ice. 



It is perfectly plain that this rise of the Norwegian lands was 

 shared by that of Sweden, Lapland, Finland, and Northern 

 Kussia. We have an immense quantity of evidence all pointing 

 jnost emphatically to the rise having taken place all round the 

 Northern Baltic seaboard since the so-called Glacial age, and 

 evidence of it is forthcoming from all parts of Sweden and 

 Finland in the widespread beds of stratified sands and clays which 

 are found at various heights up to 1,500 or 2,000 feet, and in the 

 shell-beds and other similar debris, and which show that not only 

 has Scandinavia been rising for a long time, but also that it was 

 not long ago in great part submerged, and formed part of 

 a wide-spreading sea extending from the Dovrefelds to the 

 Petchora. 



Perhaps the most striking proof of this is the evidence of the 

 fauna of the great lakes of Sweden and Northern Eussia, Belihten 

 seen as they have been called. They contain a number of 

 species of animals clearly of marine types, curious biological 

 witnesses to the fact of their having in recent geologic times formed 

 part of a continuous sea. This must liave been the very last 

 chapter in their history, or these forms of life would have been 

 exterminated. 



Dr. Ludolf Credner has collected some very important evidence in 

 regard to this matter in his well-known memoir on Belihten seen, 

 published as one of the supplements to Petermann's "Mittheilungen" 

 in 1887. He has shown that in thirteen Swedish lakes, namely, 

 Wener, Wetter, MoUetjarnet near Krokfors, Lelaugen, Stora-Lee- 

 Sjcin, Animmen in Dalsland, Glassfiord, Fry ken in Wermland, 



