402 Sir E. H. Eoivorth—The Surface Contour of 



appeals to successive and sudden upheavals of the Northern chain 

 ot Scandinavia, aided by a corresponding depression in the south, 

 suggesting that the angular blocks resulted from a number 

 of sudden shocks or jars, which, w^ithout throwing the beds up into 

 distinct ridges as in many parts of the world, simply shattered them 

 into numerous fragments by general convulsive earthquakes which 

 affected broad horizontal areas. 



Evidence of a similar kind, but not on the same scale, was 

 collected by Sefstrora from other parts of Sweden. Thus, he says, 

 south of Broms, on the boundary between the districts of Calmar 

 and Blekinge, the granite is all broken and the pieces lie with their 

 sides irregularly elevated or sunken, much in the same manner as 

 pieces of ice formed at high-water, and the water having sunk the 

 ice rests on an uneven bottom. From this, he says, no other con- 

 clusion can be drawn than that the displacement has been caused 

 by some subterranean cause. Further west, near the church of 

 Losen, are several great fragments of a large slab which has been 

 detached from the main rock below. "It is also," says Sefstrom, 

 " soon discovered that this slab has been, by a shock from the north, 

 removed a little further south, and that it has been partly crushed to 

 pieces by the shock." Again, Sefstrom speaks of the fact that in 

 Sweden, on opening new mines the solid rock is seldom found until 

 we reach a depth of from one to two fathoms ; until we reach this the 

 mountain is, as it were, shivered, and is full of fractures and fissures 

 filled with a shiny powder of the same or some other rock, and not 

 nnfrequently ending in a large open chasm. This is clearly seen about 

 a mile from Fahlun. He also quotes the opinion of Bei'zelius, that 

 in West Gothland some violent cause has broken and carried away 

 the Silurian rocks, except where protected by a covering of trap. 

 Sefstrom and Murchison have shown further how the various and 

 sporadic angular blocks which are found in Sweden can be traced 

 right up to these ruinous masses of rock actually in situ, and 

 there can be no doubt that whatever force it was which carried 

 them that force derived them from these centres of distribution. 

 These facts point, it seems to me, to only one reasonable conclusion, 

 namely, that the angular blocks of Scandinavian origin and also the 

 angular gravel, like the angular and subangular debris in the Chalky 

 Clay of England, are the direct result of the breakage of the surface 

 beds at a time when the surface contour of the country was violently 

 altered and remoulded, and they show that the phenomena which 

 we have traced in Norfolk and in the Danish islands are also forth- 

 coming in the Scandinavian peninsula. The phenomena are clearly 

 the result of the immense strain exercised upon beds in situ by 

 sudden upheavals and the operation of more or less violent forces, 

 and they in fact testify to the most important elevation of the 

 land in Sweden having been violent and rapid. 



The double conclusion here pressed for, namely, that the larger 

 part of Scandinavia and Finland was recently under the sea, and 

 that the surface of the country has been to a large extent violently 

 and spasmodically smashed and broken, are important conclusions 



