H. W. MoncJdoii — On some Hardanger Lakes. 533 



Saleh and Gebel Somali, the highest peaks in the island. The 

 limestones appear to be veiy fossiliferous, and one specimen is 

 crowded with shell fragments ; but the only specimen generically 

 determinable is a Nerincea in a block of limestone collected by 

 Dr. Forbes at the height of 700 feet. The limestone at that point 

 is therefore no doubt Cretaceous. 



On the lower parts of the island a reef limestone occurs up to 

 a height of 40 feet above sea-level. As it contains well-preserved 

 specimens of Goniastrma reti/onnis, it is no doubt of Pleistocene age. 



I 



II. — Notes on some Hakdanger Lakes. 

 By Horace W. Monckton, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



N many places in Western Norway we find a lake separated from 

 a fjord by a mile or so of sand and gravel. Looking from the 

 fjord, we see in such a case a series of step terraces, with possibly 

 a high mound at the back, forming a dam at the end of the lake. 



Several examples of this arrangement were mentioned by Amund 

 Helland in a paper published by the Geological Society in 1877,^ and 

 he adopts the explanation suggested by S. A. Sexe," that the dam 

 at the end of the lake is a moraine formed when a glacier filled the 

 space now occupied by the lake ; in short, that it is the terminal 

 moraine of a glacier which must have halted for some time at the 

 point during the retreat of the ice, and consequently these mounds 

 and terraces were formed at the close of or after the Glacial Period, 

 for any advance of the ice beyond their site in the valleys would 

 have carried them away to a greater or less extent. 



During visits to Norway in 1896, 1898, and 1899, I have 

 explored several of the valleys in which these moraines occur, and 

 I think the following notes may be of interest. 



I will first describe a side valley which branches off south from 

 the great valley of the Hardanger Fjord, between 80 and 90 miles 

 from the open sea. It is a deep channel carved out of gneiss, and the 

 sides have in many places been scored and smoothed by ice, and 

 these smoothed rock-sides pass behind all the deposits in the valley, 

 showing that it is older than them all ; in this it differs from many 

 of our English valleys, that of the Thames for instance, where we 

 believe that the valley is more recent than the drift around it and 

 that the gravels in the valley mark stages in its excavation. 



The mouth of the branch of the Hardanger Fjord valley of which 

 I am speaking is at Vik i Eidfjord, and it has been filled up with 

 gravel, sand, etc., almost to the edge pf the main valley, so that there 

 is but a small bay or indent in the fjord at its mouth. 



From the fjord one sees a series of step terraces rising one above 

 the other, the highest being on the east side with a flat top and of 

 considerable extent. 



If we follow the river up from its mouth we find that it has cut 

 a channel through all the terraces, which look like great railway 



^ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxxiii, p. 142. 



2 " Maerker eften en listid " ; 4to ; Christiania, 1866. 



