10 Mr Theodore Kjerulf on the Phenomena 
The few shells I have met with in the marl, or in the con- 
temporary glacial sand, have been ascertained by Professor 
Sars to be either strictly arctic species, or marked by size 
and other peculiarities, with a distinctively arctic character. 
Shell-beds, however, are found, which, though not actually 
in the marl, are yet closely connected with it, both in the 
strictly glacial character of their shells, and in the range 
above the sea-level to which they ascend. These beds are 
loose heaps of entire and broken shells, sometimes without 
the addition of any other substances, sometimes mixed with 
sand and sandy clay. They are, in fact, true littoral banks. 
These shell-beds must not be confounded with the later 
shell-beds. The latter belong to the post-glacial period, 
when the sea stood at a lower elevation than before. The 
true glacial shell-beds, of which we are now speaking, lie at 
a level of from 400 to 470 feet, and belong to that earlier 
period, when the land was depressed not less than 500 or 
600 feet below the present level of the sea. They are pro- 
bably contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the glacial banks 
formerly described, and with the sands and marls which 
have been mentioned as resting directly on the furrowed 
surface of the underlying rock. 
The accompanying diagram may make this more intelli- 
ible. 
Old sea-level about 600 feet above the present. 
Present sea-level. Pig, 1s 
At the bottom is granite; above this is (1.) Sand and 
marl, associated with the cotemporary shell beds marked +; 
(2.) Are the later clays; (3.) Sand. The sand and marl 
marked (1.), and the shell beds +, belong to the earlier 
glacial period, during the latter part of which the sea-level 
