GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS. 113 
were filled with granite, porphyry, and greenstone. In 
these fissures all kinds of fragments are met with, and 
many of these dykes extend without alteration beyond the 
layers of schist, limestone, and sandstone, which they tra- 
verse, on the one hand, into the great eruptive masses of 
granite, syenite, and porphyry, and on the other band, far 
beyond the limits of the -silurian region into the beds of 
the fundamental rock. These dykes inter-cross one another 
regularly ; the greenstone dykes are thus seen to be notably 
the latest formations. ~ 
In Southern Norway the series of formations cannot be. 
traced beyond the commencement of the Devonian period. 
Covering these immediately are those of the glacial period. 
All the intermediate formations found elsewhere in Europe, 
such as those of the coal measures, and the secondary and 
tertiary formations, are entirely awanting. 
In the north there is found in the island of Ando, the. 
most northern of the islands of Vesteraolen, a sandstone 
formation with intercallated beds of coal, and of combus-; 
tible schists of little importance. They come to the surface.. 
The fundamental rock seems to take there the form of a 
cup, which is filled with beds of sandstone, and is now- 
covered with an extensive marsh. Elsewhere there are 
sandstones aud conglomerate of uncertain age, but sup- 
posed to be Devonian. In the Beskadesfjeld are found, 
beds of graphite supposed to belong to the carboniferous 
period. In the peninsula of Varjag, all the heights are 
covered with a reddish brown conglomerate and brown 
sandstone, supposed to belong to the Permian period; and 
it may be remarked in passing, that all the larger rivers 
which traverse the plateau of Finmark are auriforous, Go'd 
is found in small leaves or scales in the beds of the rivers, 
and in the large gravel of the erratic deposits through 
which they flow. The formation of these deposits is 
attributable to what is known as glacial action, at a later 
period of the earth’s history, which will be brought under 
consideration in connection with other phenomena which 
are ‘attributable to this, Pes 
I 
