NORWEGIAN GLACIERS. 



years 1822-1845. Thus Forbes states: „During the last tliirty 

 years, there has been a tendency of the Alpine glaciers to increase, 

 which seems not to have been noticed in Scandinavia." We have, 

 however, a record of the Glacier of Nigard, stating that this gla- 

 cier had been increasing in the years immediately previous to 

 1839, but that in the summer of the last-mentioned year, the 

 oscillation seems to have attained a maximum, the position of 

 the glacier in that season being recorded to be stationary. The 

 very phenomenon of glacier increase, here observed, is of con- 

 siderable interest, especially, when compared with the phenomena 

 of wet weather and of glacier advance recorded by Brückner 

 and Richter, the former of these naturalists stating that a period 

 of rather cold, wet weather had prevailed during the years 1831 

 — 1855, and the lather that a commencement of glacier advance 

 had taken place in 1835. It is, indeed, very difficult and often 

 unphilosophical to draw general conclusions from a single obser- 

 vation, or a few such; but there are also sometimes exceptional 

 cases to be met with, and we might be justified in regarding the 

 oscillation of the Glacier of Nigard to be a phenomenon of more 

 general importance. 



Subsequently, however, to that shght increase of glaciers, 

 which could only be regarded as a small interruption of a longer 

 and well-marked period of decrease, oscillation has certainly gone 

 on in the same direction as before, causing a still further dimi- 

 nishing of glaciers. Several instances may be adduced to illus- 

 trate this fact. Forbes, when mentioning the figures of decrease 

 given by Bohr and Naumann, expressed it as his opinion that 

 the distance between the moraine of 1743 and the terminal edge 

 of the Glacier of Nigard in 1851 was even greater than that 

 stated by those naturalists. As regards the Glacier of Lodal, 

 Bohr, in 1820, stated the distance between the moraine of 1740 

 —1750 and the edge of the glacier to be 533 metres, but in 

 1845 DuROCHER affirmed the distance to have increased about 

 sixty metres, as Forbes also, in round numbers, stated the dis- 



