EUROPE DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 447 



lying tracts that extend from the hills to the sea. In the south- 

 eastern counties, so far as we know at present, the ice-sheet at 

 the climax of the Glacial period did not extend farther than 

 the valley of the Thames, beyond which no trace of its bottom- 

 moraine has been met with.* 



Professor A. Geikie summarizes the facts concerning the 

 continent as follows : 



In Scandinavia the ice-striae run westward and southwest- 

 ward on the Norwegian coasts, and. eastward or southeastward 

 across the lower grounds of Sweden. When the ice descended 

 into the basin of the Baltic and the plains of northern Ger- 

 many, it moved southward and southwestward, but seems to 

 have slightly changed its direction in different areas and at 

 different times. Its movements can be made out partly from 

 the striae on the solid rock, but more generally from the glacial 

 drift which it has left behind. Thus it can be shown to have 

 moved down the Baltic into the North Sea. At Berlin its 

 movement must have been from east to west. But at Leipsic, 

 as recently ascertained by Credner, it came from north-north- 

 west to south -south east, being doubtless shed off in that direc- 

 tion by the high grounds of the Harz Mountains. Its southern 

 limit can be traced with tolerable clearness from Jevennaar, in 

 Holland, eastward across the Rhine Valley, along the base of 

 the Westphalian hills, round the projecting promontory of 

 the Harz, and then southward through Saxony to the roots of 

 the Erzgebirge. Passing next southeastward along the flanks 

 of the Riesen and Sudeten chain, it sweeps across Poland into 

 Russia, circling round by Kiev, and northward by Nijni-Nov- 

 gorod toward the Urals. It has been estimated that, excluding 

 Finland, Scandinavia, and the British Isles, the ice must have 

 covered no less than 1,700,000 square kilometres of the present 

 lowlands of Europe. . . . 



The ice is computed to have been at least between 6,000 

 and 7,000 feet thick in Norway, measured from the present 

 sea-level. From the height at which its transported debris 

 has been observed on the Harz, it is believed to have been at 



* " Prehistoric Europe," pp, 189, 190, 192, 193 



