4 Sir a. S. Howorth — The Scandinavian Ice-sheet. 



College (London) by E. W. Gray, Esq., to whom I return my sincere 

 thanks. The following is the composition : — 



SiOj 



60-32 



P2O5 



0-05 



AUO3 



17-10 



Fe,03 



4-74 



FeO 



1-12 



MnO 



trace 



CaO 



3-51 



MgO 



2-89 



KjO 



2-11 



Na,0 



6-06 



H2O 



1-99 



Loss on heating to 100 C 



0-81 





99-70 



Specific gravity 



2-609 



II, — The Scandinavian Ice-sheet and the Baltic Glacier: 

 A Sceptical Commentakt. 



By Sir Henry H. Howorth, K.C.I.E., M.P., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



(PLATE I.) 



IF the paper on the recent geology of Sweden which has 

 already appeared in the Geological Magazine^ is sound 

 in argument (and I have not met anyone yet who has answered 

 it), it follows that the views ordinarily current in regard to 

 the glacial geology of Northern Europe will have to be greatly 

 modified. Scandinavia is confessedly the great focus and centre of 

 the phenomena which have been interpreted as glacial. From 

 Scandinavia the most interesting and widely travelled of the erratics 

 which are found in other parts of Europe have come, and if the 

 drift of Northern and Central Europe were distributed by an ice- 

 sheet, then it is universally conceded that that ice-sheet must have 

 culminated in Scandinavia and moved thence in various directions ; 

 but it seems to me that the analysis which I have attempted to 

 give of the actual phenomena makes it difficult to attribute the most 

 important of them to ice action at all. 



It is perfectly plain, as every native geologist admits, and as is 

 admitted by every geologist of note who has visited the country, 

 that Scandinavia has been submerged in quite recent times to the 

 extent of at least 600 feet. The terraces, the raised beaches, the 

 shell deposits, the stratified sands and gravels, etc., all unmistakably 

 point to this conclusion as inevitable. 



If so, it is also inevitable that if there has been a Glacial Period in 

 Scandinavia at all it was before and not after the submergence. 

 The native geologists are at one about this conclusion also. We 

 cannot conceive these raised beaches and shell deposits, and these 

 widespread beds of stratified sands and gravels, surviving the 

 pounding and crushing and thrusting of a vast ice-sheet, which is 



1 See Geol. Mag., 1898, May (pp. 195-206) and June (pp. 257-266). 



