:\ L 6 Geological Society, 



Norwegian fjords. Prom a consideration of the height at which 

 these boulders occur on islands at the mouth of the latter, the 

 author estimates the thickness of some of the glaciers, to which he 

 attributes the formation of the fjords, and arrives at thicknesses 

 varying from 2940 to 7010 feet. The author remarks that fjords, 

 lakes, and cirques are always met with in glaciated regions, and 

 explains their formation by the action of ice. His view of the 

 course of events in Norway is as follows : — Before the Glacial epoch 

 thousands of streams commenced the work of erosion and produced 

 valleys. During the Glacial epoch these valleys were enlarged and 

 lake-basins were hollowed out. The descending glaciers ground 

 out fjords to their full length when the Glacial epoch was at its 

 highest ; but as it declined the glaciers ground out the inner part 

 to a still greater depth, producing the present characters of the 

 marine fjords, and giving rise to lake-hollows in other places. 

 That the glaciers once extended beyond the fjords is shown by 

 moraine -matter being dredged up. Some of the sea-banks and 

 islands off Christiania-fjord are old moraines ; and if Norway should 

 be raised 400 metres, these banks would show as moraines and 

 plains before the lake-basins of the fjords. 



2. " On the Drift of Brazil." By C. Lloyd Morgan, Esq., P.G.S., 

 Assoc.K.S.M. 



The author described the position and mode of occurrence of large 

 boulders of gneiss and granite in the red drift of Brazil and on the 

 slopes of hills even at considerable elevations, and stated that, like 

 Professor Agassiz, he could not see how these could have been trans- 

 ported to their present positions except by the agency of ice. At 

 the same time he stated that none of these boulders exhibit any 

 glacial scratches, nor are any such markings perceptible on exposed 

 rock- surfaces ; their absence on the latter he thought might be due 

 to weathering. The surface of the gneiss on which the red drift 

 lies, however, is moutonnee. The author remarked with regard to 

 the great glacier which Prof. Agassiz imagined to have filled the 

 valley of the Amazons, that the Ancles from which he supposed it 

 to have come, are more than 1500 miles from Rio, and that right 

 across the country there stretches an almost continuous series of 

 mountains and hills. He also called attention to the existence of 

 mountains in eastern Brazil of sufficient height to have nourished 

 glaciers, but at the same time remarked that the question of the 

 origin of the supposed glaciers cannot be satisfactorily answered 

 until the boulders found in the clay have been traced to their sources. 

 For his own part he is inclined to believe that the drift, if of glacial 

 origin, was not formed by glaciers taking their rise in any of the 

 peaks indicated by him, but by an almost universal South- 

 American ice-sheet. 



