10 Sir H. IE. Howorth — The Scandinavian Ice-sheet. 



and that is the impossibility of understanding how any ice-sheet 

 could have existed in Scandinavia of such portentous depth and 

 potency as to force debris thence to the Carpathians on the one hand 

 and to Holland and Britain on the other. 



All the evidence I know points to Scandinavia being higher now 

 than it was in so-called Glacial times, and points to its having risen 

 at least 600 feet since the drift was distributed, and we have no 

 evidence that I know of that it was ever higher than it is now. As 

 it is, the elevation of the Dovrefelds is so moderate that it is im- 

 possible to understand their nursing a great ice-sheet. In fact, we 

 know that such an ice-sheet never covered their higher parts or those 

 of the Lofodens, for they are rugged and not smoothed by ice. 

 Pettersen has proved as clearly as can be that whatever ice was 

 upon them in so-called Glacial times could not drive the stones even 

 as far as the string of islands down the Norwegian coast. It is 

 incredible, therefore, to suppose that any ice they supported could 

 have driven the stones right away to Smolensk or to Brunswick. 

 The contention that it did so, which is repeated, parrot-like, by one 

 writer after another, seems to me, in the absence of some evidence 

 of its physical possibility, completely childish. 



But, as I have before remarked, the majority of the stones, and 

 notably those found in Britain, did not even come from the Dovre- 

 felds or the higher parts of Scandinavia, but from the lowlands on 

 the borders of Viken and the undulating plains of Central Sweden. 

 A fortiori it is impossible to understand how any ice-sheet could 

 have taken up the stones there and carried them to where they 

 are found. 



The arguments I have used in this and the preceding papers 

 have been entirely or almost entirely geological. There remains, 

 however, another, which I will only shortly refer to, namely, that 

 based on the biological evidence. 



According to the glacialist, the whole of Scandinavia was covered 

 with ice for a long period, and this ice, radiating from that peninsula, 

 extended for hundreds of miles south of the Baltic. During this 

 period we are to believe that the whole -fauna and flora of this 

 immense region was completely extirpated, or rather migrated, 

 goodness knows how and goodness knows whither. When the 

 ice had disappeared it is supposed to have gone back again un- 

 changed and unaltered. This monstrous paradox has been widely 

 believed in by geologists, and been passed on by them to the 

 zoologists and the botanists. 



I tried to show in a former paper how this theory, which had 

 also been applied to Greenland, was quite at issue with the evidence 

 available from that much more northern land, and I have no doubt 

 myself that in Scandinavia also the theory of the extermination of 

 all plants and animals during the Drift period and their reintro- 

 duction afterwards is just as fantastic. I do not know of a tittle of 

 evidence in favour of the view here condemned except and beyond 

 the mere fact that, if the glacial theory as usually taught be sound, 

 it necessarily involves adding this most tremendous hypothesis 



