324 . LECTURE XI. 



the interior was at its highest ; then comes sand, and, quite at 

 the top, loam. 



" The large erratics lie above the banks of pebbles, 

 loam, and sand ; they are in Scandinavia, in a less degree, 

 deposited by floating ice-rafts, but mostly directly by the 

 glaciers." 



" We have thus before us a period, a real ice-period, and an 

 ice-sea, which washed the glacial coasts of Scandinavia and Fin- 

 land, then constituting one continent. But the proofs of such 

 an Arctic sea apply not only to this ice continent. The north 

 Grerman plains, from Holland to Russia, are covered with 

 blocks, pebbles, and drift, all of which are derived from Scan- 

 dinavia and Finland, the southern boundary of which is along 

 the elevation of the land, which is limited by the Weser moun- 

 tains, the Hartz, the Bohemian, and Giant mountains. In the 

 east, the tracts of these erratic blocks wind through the Russian 

 lowlands towards the Ural so regularly around Finland that 

 they describe almost a circle. This is the dispersion circle, so 

 to speak, of this ice sea, within which the blocks carried by the 

 icebergs were stranded, and the mere circumference of this 

 block line shows, that at the time of the greatest extension of 

 the ice sea, the Scandinavian-Finnish continent was an island, 

 whilst a broad ice arm -connected the present Polar sea, and 

 the White sea with the Baltic." 



In the whole extent, from the North American continent 

 down to New York, in England and Scotland, in Scandinavia 

 and Finland, in Russia, as far as the steppes of Petschora 

 (Peczora), are found the same formations, the polished, striated, 

 and furrowed surfaces, the gravel banks, and above them the 

 clays, marls, with specific northern marine molluscs, or with 

 species which attain their proper size only in the north, but 

 which diminishes in the south. 



Sars has, by his minute investigations, succeeded in deter- 

 mining the highest level of the ancient ice-sea, and the periods 

 of retreat, whilst Loven proved that Denmark was connected 

 with Norway, that the White sea must have been connected 

 with the Baltic by a broad arm, which wound round Finland, 

 and that the Swedish Wener- and Wetter-lakes, now several 



