﻿Prof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 295 



present position of the whole Finnish archipelago. As they rose 

 still higher, they entered upon the third stage in which I saw them, 

 representing, in miniature, a small country where part of the land 

 has been raised high above the action of ice, whilst the remainder 

 yet lies within its influence. In such a case as this we have a small 

 island formed by the rise of two small rocks. Why can we not then 

 go further and picture to ourselves the formation of many islands 

 which, as they emerge from their watery bed, unite to form countries 

 marked and moulded like the nuclei from which they spring ? It 

 is certainly not a great stretch of the imagination. 



All geologists grant that oscillations of land and water have taken 

 place, and this together with the present or such slightly modified 

 climatal conditions as would result from these changes is all that is 

 asked. If it were conceded that through some such cause as a polar 

 extension of land in the Eastern Hemisphere, the formation of a cold 

 current travelling towards the south, or the cutting off of the Gulf 

 Stream travelling towards the north, we might then reasonably ex- 

 pect to have a climate in Europe not unlike that of corresponding 

 latitudes in America, and the effects of coast ice might be expected 

 at least so far south as the middle of France ; nay more, if Europe 

 had been a rising area during such periods, the greater ]Dart of its 

 surface would have been gradually subject to such an action. 



Commencing with Belgium and Holland, and travelling eastward 

 over Denmark, North Germanj', Poland, and as far east as Novgorod 

 in Eussia, then north to the White Sea, and west over Scandinavia, 

 excepting its high central portions, there is an area which has been 

 subject to oscillation during late geological times ; and if, during these 

 times, such climatal conditions existed in Europe as now exist in 

 America, I think we might in many places look successfully for the 

 action of old coast-ice upon old coast-lines. 



Of course many objections may be raised to such a view as this, 

 but there will be more still to matters of detail in the production 

 of certain observed phenomena by the agent which we suppose to be 

 here employed, rather than to the weightier objections which are 

 raised as to the ways and means of the production of the agent 

 itself invoked by glacialists. We all know into how much 

 difficulty, uncertainty, and speculation we find ourselves involved 

 when we endeavour to conceive the manner of production and 

 method of action of that immense glacier which by some is 

 supposed to have covered Northern Europe. Granted oscil- 

 lation of land, and a climate not more intense than that of North 

 America, and all those astronomical and physical questions as to 

 what gave birth to the heat and cold necessary for the production of 

 huge continental glaciers, together with much speculation, contro- 

 versy, and other products of the imagination, are done away with. 

 Appearances similar to those which I have described as having been 

 seen along the coast of Finland, I have also seen along nearly 4000 

 miles of coast in Labrador and Newfoundland. In many places the 

 rocks are striated and often worn and smoothed. This latter effect 

 more especially has been recorded by Lyell, Campbell, Packard, and 



