170 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 
down in the valley, not far from the glacier, was the Buer 
farm ; and from the mountain side came a cascade between 
700 and 800 feet in height. The owner of the little farm 
was in great tribulation. He saw with much anxiety the 
steady advance of the ice which had already destroyed 
some of his pasture land at the head of the valley, and in 
a few years would probably sweep away the little wood 
which we had passed on our way up; then the farmer 
would be compelled to find new quarters, and perhaps be 
aruined man, He had tried to sell his farm, but nobody 
was willing to buy it, fearing to cast away their money. 
It would not be strange indeed if in the course of forty 
or fifty years this glacier should reach the very shore of 
the Sandven lake, whence it could go no farther, for the 
ice would melt in the water; but glaciers are fickle both 
in their forward and retrograde movements, and in a few 
years the Buer-brae-en may retire instead of advancing.’ 
It is interesting in lookiug upon such scenes —forgetting 
for the time, if we be there in the prosecution of the study 
of forest science, the importance of these glaciers as 
perennial sources of supply of water in the rivers which 
are made use of for the floatage of timber from remote high- 
lying lands to the coast—to look upon them as modern 
illustrations of what was written well nigh 3000 years ago 
in Kcclesiastes—attributed to the Royal Preacher, who 
‘gpake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a 
thousand and four ; who spake of trees, from the cedar tree 
that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth 
out of the wall ; who spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and 
of creeping things, and of fishes ;\—and that twice repeated, 
‘That which hath been is now; and that which is to be 
hath already been. . . . ‘The thing that hath been is that 
which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall 
be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is 
there any thing of which it can be said, see this is new? 
It hath been already of old time which was before us, 
—and to look upon them as supplying us with data for the 
