GEOLOGY. 265 
' Imagine a débacle of a magnitude such as would corre- 
spond to the size of the glaciers of those times, and the 
rapidity of its flow, and we shall not wonder that stones 
which might have seemed to us to have been immovable 
because of their size and weight, have been carried away 
and buried in some lower-lying lake. In this then, as well 
as in the striae on the rocks, we may see the traces of the 
glacial period, the effects of glacial action. 
Of the vast extent of the glacier covering Scandinavia 
and Northern Russia at that time, under one sheet of ice, 
it is difficult for the novice in the study of such pheno- 
mena to form an adequate conception. 
Christiansand stands upon ice-ground rocks. All the 
islands for miles out to sea are what are known as roches 
moutonnées, peering above the waves. The road leads 
inland through a wild pass, with hills on either side, with 
dark pines growing in chinks on the grey rock, and the 
bottom of the pass is filled with a plain of boulders and 
sand, which look as if ice had dropped them yesterday. 
Throughout Norway and Sweden, and I may say the 
whole north of Europe, boulders abound, and zircon 
syenite found as fixt rock near Christiansand has both 
been found in Lapland as a perched block, and in pieces 
of lesser bulk at Galloway in Scotland, and thus we 
are led to the consideration of another aspect of the 
case. 
The author of Frost and Fire has traced the striae in 
several valley lines in Scotland. And in allusion to the views 
advanced by Professor Ramsay, and reargued by Professor 
Geikie, he says—‘ Mr Ramsay attributes many rock basins 
and their lakes to glaciation, and intimates that he goes 
further and attributes these, and many of the main lines of 
denudation in Northern Europe, in North America, and 
elsewhere, to glaciaton, combined with ocean currents. —. 
‘ Both in Scotland and in Scandinavia he gave unwearied 
attention to the striae and their conformation in accordance 
with the movement of waves, which he had made a special 
