﻿292 Frof. Milne — Across, Europe, and Asia. 



over areas of enormous extent, both in the temperate and frigid 

 zones.^ Now what must be the effect of such actions upon a coast 

 where we have a gradual elevation of the land in operation, or, to 

 speak more generally, where there is a varying relation between a 

 country and the water which surrounds it? The case I shall take 

 for consideration is where the land may be supposed to be emerging, 

 as in the case of Finland. How this emergence has been produced, 

 whether by an elevation of the land, or by a drawing off of the waters, 

 by an accumulation of polar ice, makes no difference. First, consider 

 the land when it is just beneath the surface of the water, where, in 

 summer time, it forms a heaving curling swell, and often a crest- 

 capped breaker, to warn the passing boats of its dangerous shallows. 

 At this period it comes for the first time within the influence of coast 

 ice, and moulding is begun upon its surface. During winter and 

 spring months passing pans and small bergs of ice jostle on its 

 shallows. Should it possess asperities, they are rounded off. And as 

 it rises higher in the water, it will gradually assume the hump- 

 backed form which is so observable in many of the small rocky 

 islands on the Finnish coast. It will now be within the full influence 

 of all the grinding agents which, during the winter months, float 

 round and attach themselves to its shores, A. fringe of ice, set with 

 teeth of stone, is ready at every tide to rise and fall upon its sides, 

 at every wind to be driven high and dry or to be carried away, and 

 with every current to move coastwise scouring and scratching along 

 its rocky shore. 



Now what I Avish to maintain, and what I have put forward before, 

 is, that as the island or coast-line continues to rise, the definite 

 character and markings of coast-ice are carried upwards, and remain 

 in many cases raised high above and sometimes far removed from 

 the present sea-line, as monuments of an old coast that once was 

 fringed with ice. 



Striking examples of this I saw in some of the islands just before 

 we reached Abo. Some of these were large, and were decked with 

 clumps of trees ; others, which w^ere smaller, were without trees, but 

 were black with age and probably with a growth of lichen ; whilst 

 others, again, the smallest, of about fifty yards in diametei", were only 

 raised like inverted saucers a few feet above sea-level. Many of 

 these islands had a great similarity in their rounded contour, and 

 were covered with boulders brought there by the winter ice. The 

 surface of the smallest of these small islands was wholly of a whitish 

 colour, jDroduced by the rubbing of the ice, and showing that they 

 had recently been entirely covered with it. As in winter time the 

 larger islands are only fringed by ice, the whitish colour, as might 

 naturally be expected, only extends in a band round their base, instead 

 of wholly covering them. 



Now the point I observed is this, that in taking one of the larger 

 islands, one without a capping of trees or shrubs being the best for 



1 A more detailed account of the action of coast ice can be seen in " Ice aud Ice 

 "Work in A'ewfouiidland," Geol. Mag. Dec. II. Vol. III. Nos, 7, 8, 9. 



