NORWEGIAN GLACIERS. 77 



ages, from that hour, long since passed, when for the first time a 

 small hang-glacier was to be seen on the slope of the moun- 

 tain, up to the present day. 



For, in all probability, the greater part of our country, during 

 the Ice Age, was for a long time completely covered by an 

 almost continuous ice-sheet. Even among our loftiest mountains, 

 in the Jotunheim, we meet with evident traces of the action of 

 such a continental glaciation. And these traces, in a more con- 

 spicuous manner, are to be followed along our very extensive 

 coast, both on the shores of the mainland itself, and on the 

 numerous skerries lying outside. 



Our existing glaciers might easily be regarded as the remn- 

 ants of that continental ice-sheet, left in places in which topo- 

 graphical and climatic conditions were most favourable to contin- 

 uous glaciation. Up to the present it has proved impossible to 

 solve thisproblem by direct demonstration. But the faunistic 

 and floral conditions of our post-glacial, marine deposits, clays 

 as well as banks of shells, bear such strong evidence as to 

 climatic changes in times past, that even as regards the varia- 

 tion of glaciers we may form a correct idea. For it is highly 

 improbable that neolithic man, roaming the shores of our Tapes- 

 sea, had any field for glacier excursions and glacier mountain- 

 eering within the boundaries of his own country, at the time 

 when the adjacent sea-shores teemed with members of the Tapes 

 family, and when Isocardia cor, L. crept upon the bottom of the 

 sea along our southern and western coasts, at least, as far north- 

 wards as the Trondhjem Fjord. 



We are thus obliged to regard the present glaciation of our 

 country, as a recent one. It is then, however, very evident how 

 small a space of time this last period of glaciation covers as 

 compared with the whole Ice Age, and how slight are the changes 

 in topographical features during that recent phase of ice-covering. 



From a genetic point of view, there is no particular diffe- 

 rence between the different forms of superglacial denudation, 



