Vol. 60.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. LxXXV 



country, arid having traced those of the Norwegian coast from 

 Bergen to Hammerfest, T may perhaps be permitted to point out, 

 as deferentially as I possibly can, one or two of the insuper- 

 able difficulties with which, as I venture to think, Prof. Stress's 

 theoretical explanation is beset. He has, as it seems to me, 

 unwittingly confounded two sets of beach-lines, which differ a good 

 deal from each other in general character, and are entirely distinct 

 in origin. Availing himself of the remarkably full and interesting 

 researches of Scandinavian geologists regarding the glaciation of 

 their country, he dwells upon the importance of the terraces left 

 by the freshwater lakes that were dammed back by the great 

 ice-sheet as it retired. He believes that these phenomena extended 

 even to the Norwegian coast, and that the strand-lines of the 

 fjords, whether in the form of platforms eroded out of the solid 

 rock (seter) or terraces of sediment, mark former levels of lakes 

 that filled these valleys when their mouths were blocked up 

 with the ice-sheet. As the lowest of these strand-lines includes 

 sands and gravels crowded with marine shells, he is compelled 

 to admit that it marks a former sea-beach. But he endeavours to 

 discriminate between it and the other horizontal shelves, which 

 follow it in parallel lines at higher levels. He affirms that the 

 latter present a series of ' characters absolutely irreconcilable with 

 what we know of the action of the sea along a shore ' — such as the 

 series of fragmentary terraces found at increasing heights inland, 

 their absence from the parts near the general coast-line, and the 

 breadth of the seter. He passes lightly over the fact that some 

 ■of these higher terraces have yielded marine organisms which are 

 progressively of more Arctic character, according to their altitude, 

 and according, consequently, to the antiquity of the sediments in 

 which thev lie. 



Now, according to the experience of those northern geologists 

 who have specially studied Scandinavian glaciation, the lakes that 

 were formed by the ponding-back of the drainage against the flanks 

 of the ice-sheet lie to the east of the watershed of the peninsula. 

 These observers have ascertained that when this ice-sheet was 

 waning, it retreated eastward from the backbone of the country 

 and lay on the eastern or Swedish slope, leaving a gradually- 

 increasing breadth of ground clear of ice. The streams flowing 

 eastward over this liberated area had their drainage arrested 

 against the margin of the ice ; and hence arose a vast series of 

 lakes which lasted for longer or shorter periods, until, by the 



