398 8tr H. H. Hoicorth — The Surface Contour of 



the substitution of the phrase Baltic ice-sheet for that of Norwegian 

 ice-sheet, which was formerly used. This change of phrase is amply 

 justified. Whatever it was that disti'ibuted the Scandinavian 

 boulders or made the inland strias on the rocks, it was not from the 

 Dovrefeld and highlands of Norway that the force came, but from 

 the much lower land a hundred miles to the east of the watershed. 

 This is admitted by every Scandinavian geologist. Professor 

 J. Geikie himself, in the last edition of his " Great Ice Age," says : 

 " Dr. Tornebohm and Professor Hogbom have shown that the 

 glacier-carried erratics of Jemtland demonstrate that the ice passed 

 from east to west — that is, right against the slope of the land ; and, 

 according to Keilhau, similar blocks, which could only have come 

 from Sweden, are now found in Trondhjems-fiord ; while Pettersen 

 has recorded similar facts in connection with the glacial phenomena 

 of Northern Norway." Mr. Geikie goes on to saj' : " The most 

 remarkable circumstance in connection with some of these blocks 

 consists in the fact that they occur at a considerably greater 

 height than the rock from which they have been derived. 

 Thus, at Areskutan, Tornebohm found blocks at a height of 4,500 

 feet, which could not possibly have come from any place higher 

 than 1,800 feet" (op. cit., p. 424). 



This is surely an extraordinary concurrence of facts, so extra- 

 ordinary that it ought to have received a great deal more serious 

 attention than it has done, for it involves quite a bundle of puzzles 

 and paradoxes, especially when combined with the theory that prevails 

 among the glacialists. How are we to account by any process for the 

 ice-sheet, which they profess to say accumulated, not on the highlands 

 of Norway, but in the lowlands of Sweden, Lapland, and Finland, 

 and thence drove its burden, not only for hundreds of miles hori- 

 zontally, biit for thousands of feet uphill ? First, Sweden, Lapland, 

 and Finland are peculiarly dry areas. The only wet winds of Europe 

 are the south and south-west winds : these beat upon the mountains 

 of Norway, which drain them of their moisture, and they pass over 

 into Finland and Sweden as dry winds. How, then, could it ever 

 have been possible, unless the contour of the country has been 

 entirely revolutionized, not only to accumulate an ice-sheet on the 

 land in question, but to make the ice-sheet culminate there ? The 

 position involves a meteorological absurdity. 



Suppose, however, we could obtain such an ice-sheet : in order that it 

 should drive stones uphill for thousands of feet, or travel for hundreds 

 of miles to the south, it must necessarily have not only been of 

 great depth, but also had a great surface slope, for we can no 

 longer have recourse to a polar ice-sheet to give impetus to the 

 movement. A succession of observers, from Bohtlingk downwards, 

 have destroyed Agassiz's postulate of a polar ice-sheet by showing 

 that the stones were distributed northwards from this area as 

 well as in other directions. If so, how could an ice-sheet, blanketing 

 the comparatively low land of Sweden and Finland, get hold of any 

 boulders at all, or of any stones, for the whole country would have 

 been covered fathoms deep in ice, and, as we know from the case of 



