208 PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Jan. 22, 



plateau upon which snow gathers. Down some of these mountain- 

 glens flow glaciers from five to ten miles long. These flow down 

 the hollows, and end in muddy rivers, which flow on in the hollows 

 through drift till they get to the sea in the fjords. Marks made by 

 these, and drift upon and under them, grooves upon rocks, lateral 

 and median moraines, and banks of drift, boulder-clay, and sands 

 and gravels, arranged by the river and by the ice down to the delta, 

 are all ranged parallel to the -sides of the rock-groove, to the ebb 

 and flow of the tide, to the run of the main river, and to the motion 

 of the glacier. Everywhere are marks to prove that the Norwegian 

 glaciers are but remnants of glaciers, enormously greater, which 

 have dwindled away. 



In Gweebarra Pass I found marks near the sea parallel to the 

 course of the river, which flows S.W. into a miniature fjord called 

 Gweebarra Bay. Having seen Bergen glaciers and these two sets 

 of marks, there is no difficulty about the meaning of this record. 

 1st. A glacier flowed S.W. seawards from the watershed down 750 

 feet some five or six miles to the fjord, and thence went off into the 

 Atlantic. 2nd. Afterwards, when that glacier dwindled and shrank 

 and melted, a smaller mountain-glacier still crossed the track of it, 

 at right angles, from N.W. to S.E., descending from the top of 

 Snow Mountain by a very steep incline, more than 2000 feet in a 

 couple of miles or thereabouts. 3rd. That glacier dwindled and 

 disappeared. But water melting from winter snows and rain-water 

 follows both tracks. The glaciated rocks in Gweebarra Pass are wet 

 by streams which run from the top of Snow Mountain down to the 

 lake from N.W. to S.E., and then run from the lake S.~W. along the 

 main groove into the sea. 



3. Glacier -forks. — In Norway, and in all countries where gla- 

 ciers exist in any notable proportions, two commonly join and flow 

 on together. At the point of junction they press alternately upon 

 rocks, which they mark alternately, producing cross grooves upon a 

 flat surface, or grooves in different directions on opposite sides of a 

 rock between the streams. In front of Derreen House, at Killma- 

 killogne Harbour, in the Kenmare river, in Kerry, at the junction 

 of two deep glens, are marks of this kind of which I have copies. 

 Cross striae are common elsewhere ; but here the cause is apparent. 



4. Local systems. — In Iceland is a scarped hill called Erik's 

 Jokull *. The sides are cliffs with talus heaps ; the top is a dome of 

 ice whose base is a plateau of horizontal beds of igneous rock. As 

 the snow-dome rises, the weight spreads the plastic base. All round 

 this local system are stones crushed off the broken edges of flat beds 

 of igneous rock ; and these are ranged in curved mounds and heaps 

 about the base of the dome. These terminal moraines belong to the 

 hill, and they were pushed outwards towards the circumference. 

 They were formed under the ice ; for nothing but the sky is above 

 this local system. At one point this snow-dome has extended its 

 base down a hollow, and there is a small river-glacier of the usual 



* See ' Frost and Fire,' vol. i. p. 428. 



