JNTERGLAC1AL EPOCHS. 273 



set of the tidal current itself. Every one knows that even on 

 our own shores the tides attain unequal heights, and the same 

 held good when our maritime regions were partially submerged 

 in postglacial times, as we know from the testimony of the 

 raised-beaches that fringe our coast-lands. It is quite possible 

 also that a more rigid system of measurement than has yet been 

 applied to the " gamle strandlinier " may materially reduce some 

 of the present apparent discrepancies. But how are we to 

 account for the capricious distribution of the strand-lines ? In 

 some fiords they are more or less well marked and occur at 

 several successive levels, while in others either one or more of 

 the series may be wanting, or strand-lines may be altogether 

 absent. Helland has suggested an explanation which gets rid 

 of the difficulty so far. He infers that during the period of sub- 

 mergence some of the fiords would continue to be filled with 

 deep glaciers like those of Greenland, and that the sea being 

 thus excluded no strand-lines would be formed in such fiords. 

 But this ingenious suggestion still leaves unaccounted for cases 

 of closely-adjoining fiords in which are found groups of strand- 

 lines that do not correspond either in number or elevation. To 

 explain such anomalies unequal movements of elevation and 

 depression of the land are out of the question, and even if they 

 were permissible, they would not account for the phenomena. 

 The fiords in which the conflicting and contradictory evidence is 

 found lie much too near to allow us to have recourse to this 

 favourite mode of solving such problems. Professor S. A. Sexe 

 has advanced another view which is directly opposed to the 

 theory of the marine origin of the strand-lines. According to 

 him they date back to the Ice Age, and were cut out by the 

 great glaciers that flowed out by the fiords, in which their move- 

 ment must have been approximately horizontal. And in proof 

 that glacier-ice has had to do with their formation, he points to 

 the occurrence of glacier -carried stones upon a strand- line 

 described by him, and to the yet more remarkable appearance 

 of ice-worn rocks and glacial striae upon another strand-line (45 

 feet over the sea-level) in Osterfjord. These striae, however, did 



T 



