358 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [April 8, 



lands (which however are never more than 300 or 400 feet above 

 the sea, and where, especially between llunaby and Carlscrona, the 

 crystalline rocks protrude), the surface begins to assume many of 

 the Swedish and Scandinavian peculiarities. The road there runs 

 through numerous bosses and promontories of granite or granitic 

 gneiss, often beautifully wooded with beech and oak trees, and each 

 of these bosses, whether its altitude be 100 feet or only twelve or 

 twenty feet above the road level, exposes a northern face not only 

 worn down, but also polished and striated from north to south, whilst 

 each southern face is natural, rugged and step- like. 



At Carlscrona again, the naval arsenal of Sweden, nearly all the 

 headlands exhibit similar phsenomena. Between Carlscrona and 

 Calmar, the Osar or longitudinal ridges of gravel, sand and rounded 

 blocks show themselves with more distinctness than in any tract fur- 

 ther south, and whilst the rocks are worn down in undulating surfaces*, 

 and are completely " moutonnes," they do not present so marked a 

 distinction between the north and south ends of the usually ellip- 

 soidal masses as is seen in those to the south of Carlscrona. The 

 worn north side (having eastern or western flanks which are also 

 affected, as will be explained hereafter) and the abrupt south side 

 are invariably best seen where the rocks consist of gneiss or any 

 hard crystalline rock, whether bedded or not, which is not prone to 

 exfoliation by atmospheric influence. Now in the district between 

 Carlscrona and Calmar there are many examples of a granite f which 

 thus exfoliates, and consequently the diurnal weathering of ages 

 has, by peeling off" concentric coats of the rock, reduced the south- 

 ern faces to nearly the same convex form as the northern. Even 

 in these exceptions, however, a close survey will detect the differ- 

 ence between the southern and northern faces. 



To the north of Calmar, as well as on the western shores of the 

 long adjacent island of Oland, the Lower Silurian sandstone is pre- 

 sent, and the fragments of this rock are abundantly distributed, 

 extending to some distance south of the tract itself; and in this low 

 tract, so full of local debris, there is little else to notice. Fine Osar, 

 however, are seen between Monsteras and Norby, and thence to 

 Jemserum, some of them being quite as coarse as those of the north 

 of Sweden. Here, as in the north, they constitute long linear ridges, 

 and often form a watershed separating lakes and streams. The 

 crystalline rocks of Smoland which appear in the vicinity of these 

 coarse Osar, particularly all those which lie to the north of them, 

 have been most powerfully denuded and " moutonnees," and being 

 ornamented with noble oak-trees help to form one of the most pic- 

 turesque tracts of Sweden. The marine promontories of quartz 

 rock to the south of Westervik exhibit also some good examples of 

 rounded northern and southern abrupt sides, but near that place the 

 rock (a quartz rock) is for the most part too full of small joints and 



* I now speak of hillocks not 200 feet above the sea, and even extending down 

 to the sea level. 



t I observed the same frequently in my journey across Sweden in the country 

 between the Wenern and Wettern Lakes. 



