Scandinavia and Finland. 403 



wlien taken separately, and when connected together involve still 

 more important ones. The question which immediately suggests 

 itself, considering that these great masses of broken and splintered 

 rock in situ are situated in an area where the land must have been sub- 

 merged by the great North Sea, whose existence everybody allows, 

 is how is it that they are not weathered and rounded and worn, but 

 remain perfectly sharp and untouched ? If they had been submerged 

 for any length of time, they must necessarily have shared the fate 

 of the rounded boulders and the rounded gravel of Scandinavia. 



On the other hand, if this part of the country has ever been 

 smothered in ice since they were in existence, how comes it that 

 this fact of their being unweathered should be so marked, and that 

 these stones should all be sharply angular and not ice-worn, striated, 

 and smoothed? Ice could not pass for any length of time over 

 these enormous heaps of angular stones and leave them in this 

 condition. The only inference possible seems to be, that if there 

 ever was an ice-sheet here it must have been before the existence 

 of these broken masses, and that neither ice nor water have lain 

 long upon them, or been able to play with them, or to knock them 

 about, or to rub over them. I cannot see how this conclusion is to 

 be avoided. 



While, however, it is true that we can in these stones see no traces 

 whatever of ice-action or of the presence of ice, nor yet of their 

 having been submerged for a length of time under a glacial sea, 

 there is evidence that a rapid current of water has passed over 

 them. On this subject I will quote a pregnant sentence of my 

 master, Murchison. 



He says : — " Notwithstanding the almost perfect angularity of these 

 broken masses (which are just like the fragments that fall from 

 natural joints in a quarry), it is curious to observe that occasionally 

 (though rarely) a small rounded boulder of porphyry may be 

 detected between their interstices, and that here and there a con- 

 siderable quantity of sandstone and smaller deti'itus is mixed with 

 loose sand, and is seen lying around the base and lower edges of the 

 blocks. This fact seems to prove that by whatever cause the blocks 

 were dislocated, water has since passed over and between them, 

 though not with such power in this tract as to abrade them, and 

 merely transporting a very few foreign pebbles, has only had 

 sufficient energy to clear away much of the intermediate loose sand 

 and smaller broken materials, converting them into the fi'agmentary 

 shingle which we see in the trainees to the south of this sandstone 

 range." (Q.J.G.S., ii, p. 376.) 



The whole puzzle now becomes clear on condition that we discard 

 that bastard form of philosophy which persists in attributing results 

 to inadequate causes because of the tyranny of some a priori 

 doctrine. The only conclusion which seems available is, that the 

 force which reformed the outline of Scandinavia and converted the 

 sea-bed which once occupied so large a portion of Northern Europe 

 into dry land, acted violently and spasmodically as similar forces on 

 a fcmaller scale have recently done iu Japan. 



