Notices of Memoirs — H. Miller — Old Coast-lines of Norway. 519 



no irapi-ession where the coast becomes rocky, the lines of incision 

 in both cases stopping short at once when they reach the harder 

 inateriaL The okl coast-lines are most numerous in well-sheltered 

 positions. Thus a single pair of large terraces in an exposed situa- 

 tion east from Christiansten, where they face the open water of the 

 fjord and the prevalent north-westerly storms, is represented in the 

 recess above Leangen Bay by ten or twelve. The same fact is 

 brought out on rising from this recess to the higher and more exposed 

 ground. Thus, while thirty-three or thirty-four terraces are mapped 

 below 350 feet (approximate) elevation, only nine or ten appear 

 between that level and the rock-terraces of the upper marine limit, 

 the numerical average height of the terraces thus rising by more 

 than a half. In recesses of the coast further east, but beyond the 

 map, these upper terraces seem to be preserved in considerably 

 greater numbers. The number actually mapped was forty-three, or 

 with the rock-terraces, forty-five. The largest number of terraces 

 hitherto described at any one place in Norway seems to have been 

 eighteen. 



Some of the general conclusions of the author are as follows : — 

 1. These terraces are all post-glacial, i.e. formed since the rock- 

 glaciation of the district. This is confirmed by the condition of 

 the high coast-cliff, which has been cut in ice-rounded rock, but 

 is not itself glaciated. It appears, however, from the fauna of the 

 raised shell-banks of the country (as worked out by Sars and 

 Kjerulf), in which recent shells do not rise above 380 feet, that the 

 seas of the upper levels were still glacial ; and, though the Trondh- 

 jem fjord was free from land-ice, other deeper fjords and higher 

 coasts may still have had glaciers coming into conflict with the sea, 

 and producing the glaciated rock-terraces described by Sexe. All 

 the evidence obtained discountenances Sexe's view that these rock- 

 terraces were cut out by glaciers, as well as Carl Petersen's that 

 they were rasped out by floating-ice coasting the shores. On 

 the clay terraces coast-ice has left no more sign of its presence 

 than the winter freezing of our British rivers leaves upon our 

 river terraces. 2. If the country was upraised by a succession 

 of elevatory jerks as supposed by most geologists from Keilhau 

 downwards, most of these would seem to have been small — much 

 smaller, at least, than is supposed by Kjerulf. It is improbable 

 that even Leangen Bay was secluded enough to contain a record 

 of all the original coast-lines. The longer pauses and greater 

 storms may have effaced an unknown number, by a process of 

 excision exemplified in all its stages by the map. It is hard to saj', 

 in fact, where the subdivision would end if all were preserved. The 

 smaller terraces remind the eye of the incised lines and little planes 

 engraved on the sandbanks bordering rivers after a flood, in which 

 case there is no periodicity in the subsidence of the waters. 3. The 

 preservation or excision of the terraces thus seems to depend as much 

 upon local circumstances — exposure to storms, resistance of coast- 

 line, etc. — as upon anything else. It is impossible at present to 

 predicate which of them shall in any given place remain. Whether 



