426 Correspondence — Prof. John Milne. 



necessary for us to imagine tliat every surface which had been 

 scratched and rounded must have been produced by a continental 

 sheet of ice, and it was only to explain some of these phenomena that 

 I suggested an agency which I believe has been hitherto overlooked, 

 namely, that of coast-ice upon a rising area. 



Dr. Linnarsson seems to say that from observations made from 

 railway waggons and steamers I think myself " enabled to refute the 

 views since many years universally held by Scandinavian geologists." 



If he had only read my paper attentively, he would have seen that 

 my views respecting the glaciated appearance of low countries like 

 that I saw in Finland are by no means only founded on what I 

 saw from the railway waggons of Scandinavia and the steamers of 

 Finland, but also from observations made upon the shores of some 

 " 4000 miles of coast in Labrador and Newfoundland." 



To convince Dr. Linnarsson that I am not acting so impulsively as 

 he would give the readers of the Geological Magazine to under- 

 stand, I may refer him to several other papers which I had pre- 

 viously written upon the same subject (see Geol. Mag., Decade II. 

 Vol. III. 1876, pp. 303, 345, 408 ; see also Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 

 1877, vol. xxxiii. p. 929). If, even without reading these papers, he 

 had only waited until the completion of my travelling notes, he 

 would have saved himself the necessity of proving the former 

 existence of a glacial climate. 



In several portions of my paper I very distinctly incline towards 

 what Dr. Linnarsson would make me appear to be so antagonistic to. 

 Thus, for example, in the Geological Magazine, February, 1878, 

 near the end of my paper, I most clearly state that my arguments 

 antagonistic to the existence of polar ice caps have "only been in 

 regard to the production of certain phenomena." Amongst these 

 apparent glacial phenomena are appearances which may be seen in 

 many portions of the world along coast-lines, islands and low-lying 

 countries, and as illustrations of these I have taken portions of 

 Finland, Labrador, and Newfoundland. Dr. Linnarsson admits the 

 abrading power of coast-ice, and I also think that, in common with 

 other geologists, he will admit that there is such a phenomenon as 

 the slow elevation of the land. If he does this, I think he must 

 then admit the existence of those effects which must result from the 

 combined influence of these two agents. That all the so-called 

 glacial phenomena to be seen in Sweden and other countries are by 

 any means to be attributed to this action, I by no means wish to 

 advocate, but at the same time I must confess that I should find it 

 difficult to prove that the scratches and furrows which I have often 

 seen upon a coast-line, and which the inhabitants tell me were pro- 

 duced by the shore ice of last winter, were the consequence of some 

 continental glacier which may have perhaps existed some 10,000 

 years ago. It would be equally antagonistic to my sense of reason 

 to endeavour to prove a similar origin for the furrows and scratches 

 which in a rising area graduate upwards and backwards from those 

 produced last year at the water's edge. 



The chief point which I wished to advocate in my paper was that 



