Europe : — a popular Physical Sketch. 397 



The mountain chain checks the influence of the sea on the 

 east side. 



A man ascending a mountain will find the temperature 

 decrease, and will, provided the mountain be sufficiently 

 high, arrive at an elevation, where the cold is so intense, that 

 the snow never melts. An imaginary line drawn through all 

 the points, above which snow never thaws, is usually called 

 the snow line. At the North Cape this line is met with at an 

 elevation of 2346 feet in the southern part of Norway, at a 

 height of 5546 feet. On the western side the snow line is 

 lower than on the eastern, because the snow is not so easily 

 melted in foggy, damp summers, as it is under a clear sky. 

 From the large masses of snow at Folgefonden and Jus- 

 . tedasbraen, in the province of Bergen, huge ice masses 

 (' Iisbraer,' ' Iokler,' * Gletscher,' glaciers,) descend as far 

 down in the valleys as the corn fields, and in consequence of 

 their extent and slow descent from above, the summer is 

 not capable of thawing them. Below these glaciers appear a 

 kind of ice-hedges (moraines) i.e. huge accumulations of earth 

 and stones carried down by the avalanches, or falling glaciers*. 

 All the rivers originating from these, are of a milky colour, 

 because they are loaded with dissolved particles of rocks. 

 In Finmark these ice masses, or glaciers, descend as far 

 down as the sea. 



The Scandinavian peninsula abounds with forests, chiefly 

 consisting of two kinds — of fir, and birch. Oak is found as far 

 as Sondmor (63° north lat.) on the western side, and on the 

 eastern only as far as Gefle (60° 30' north lat.) Beech only 

 at Laurvig, in Norway, (59° north lat.) and in Sweden not at 

 all to the northward of the large lakes. Of the three first 

 mentioned predominant forest-trees, the birch extends nearly 

 to the North Cape (70 to 72° north lat.), the Jirs to Alten (69 

 to 70° north lat.) and one kind to Kunnen, on the western 

 side (67° north lat.) On the eastern side, the last mentioned 

 fir extends a few degrees higher to the northward, finding 



