218 Glacial Erosion in Norway. 
X.—GLACIAL EROSION IN NORWAY AND IN HIGH 
LATITUDES: 
BY PROFESSOR J. W. SPENCER, B.A.SC., PH.D., F.G.S. 
E 
URING the summer of 1886, it was my good fortune to visit 
the three largest snowfields in Norway, namely, the Folge- 
fond, at the head of Hardangerfjord in southern Norway, whose 
area is 108 square miles; the Jostedalsfond, two degrees to the 
north, beyond Sognefjord, whose area is 580 square miles, and the 
largest snowfield in Europe; and the Svartisen, extending from 
just inside the arctic cirele for forty-four miles northward. All of 
these snowfields send down glaciers to within from 50 to 1,200 feet 
of the sea. These snowfields are not basins like those in the Alps, 
but are mantles covering the tops of plateaus from 3,000 to 5,000 
feet or more above the tide, from which great cañons suddenly 
descend to the sea, and extend themselves as fjords, from 1,000 to 
4,000 feet in depth. - 
Many of the Norwegian glaciers are rapidly advancing. In 
their progress they do not conform to the surfaces over which they 
pass, but are apt to arch over from rock to rock and point to point, 
especially as they are descending the ice-falls. Thus are produced 
great caverns into which the explorer can often wind his way for 
long distances. 
Beneath the glaciers of Fondal, Tunsbergdal, and Buardal, in 
the northern, north-central, and south-central snowfields of Nor- 
way, as well as under other glaciers, I observed many stones 
enclosed in ice, resting upon the rocks, to whose surfaces—sometimes 
1 Read before the Royal Society of Canada, May 25, 1887, and the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York, Aug- 
1887. Printed from advanced sheets of the Proc. Roy. Soc. of Canada. 
See also “The Erosive Power of Glaciers as seen in Norway,” Geol. 
Mag., London, Dec., iii., vol. iv., 1887, and “Ice Action in High Lati- 
tudes,” ibid., vol. v., 1888, by Prof. J. W. Spencer, M.A., Ph.D., F.G@.8: 
