﻿Frof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 293 



observation, it is distinctly seen that between the white band pro- 

 duced by the biannual rubbing of the ice and the dark-coloured rock 

 which is above it, there is in many cases an undisturbed contour, the 

 mammillations, curvatures, and hollows of the one now seen to be 

 produced by the ice, run uninterruptedly into the manimillations, 

 curvatures, and hollows of the darker rocks above. It seems to me 

 that, as year by year the sea recedes, or as the rock creeps upwards, 

 it carries with it the characters which were impressed upon it when 

 at a lower level, and what is now the dark round lichen-coloured 

 rock, a century ago may have been the clear white banded rock 

 annually scratched and scoured by ice. 



The entrance to Abo, which was the first place we touched at 

 upon the Finnish mainland, is up a long winding inlet bounded by 

 an undulating country of pinkish granite. Upon the right side as 

 we entered, the land rose in places somewhat suddenly from the 

 water, but nowhere to any considerable height. Everywhere, how- 

 ever, there was the rounded hummocky character. Upon the hills 

 which overlooked the scattered houses and buildings which formed 

 the town this was very noticeable. Everywhere there were numbers 

 of boulders. 



On the evening of the next day (Aug. 12th), after steering in and 

 out between innumerable rocks and islands, we reached Helsingfors, 

 a granite-built town standing in a much more open country than 

 that around Abo. Some of the limestone causeways contained 

 Ortlioceras. 



Now comparing these different pieces of mainland which I saw at 

 Abo, Helsingfors, and at other points, one with the other, one could 

 not fail to be struck with their great similarity, — rounded granitic 

 rocks and scattered granitic rocks, some of which are of an immense 

 size, were to be seen nearly everywhere. Two travellers who joined 

 our ship at Helsingfors, just returned from near Kajana in the far 

 north of Finland, gave me the idea of a country filled with winding 

 lakes, but not generally differing in character from that which I had 

 been looking at. 



Continuing northwards to the White Sea and Arctic Ocean, and 

 then winding round the northern end of the Baltic through Finland 

 down to the eastern side of the Scandinavian peninsula, a rough 

 undulating country covered with lakes, and often strewn with 

 boulders, is generally met with. 



The agent which moulded this country into its present form, and 

 strewed it so thick with boulders, would, I think, by most geologists, 

 be identified as ice, and the only argument that would probably 

 arise would be as to the way in which it acted. 



A universal covering of ice forming one huge glacier, like that 

 which is now supposed to cover the greater part of Northern Green- 

 land, might perhaps be the first suggestion. To explain this, a 

 colder climate than that which now exists in these latitudes would 

 be necessary, and this in its turn would require some great astrono- 

 mical change, as a variation in the obliquity of the Ecliptic, the 

 excentricity of the earth's orbit, the temperature of space, or some 



