258 R. Chambers, Esq., on Glacial Phenomena 



Jerkind, being wholly unconnected with either more elevated 

 ground in which an ordinary glacier could be formed, or with 

 a valley in which it could be contained and directed, must 

 liave had a totally different history. Again, on the summit 

 over which the road from Lavanger to Sundsvall passes, and 

 the great connecting line between Norway and Sweden in 

 that quarter, the col is a wide saddle-formed space, with only 

 gentle heights on both sides, but crossed transversely by a 

 group of low ridges. The whole of this space, composed of 

 rocks of chlorite schist, is abraded by an agent which has 

 been able to shear sharply through the upturned edges of 

 the strata, leaving clear stria? to mark its course. Surprising 

 to say, that course has not been across from west to east, 

 as the road passes ; neither has it been from north to south 

 in the line of the little ridges ; but it is athwart both of these 

 lines of hollow, from north-west to north-east, and thus 

 clearly has been independent of the form of the country. It 

 is not till we see such demonstrations as these, that we can 

 fully apprehend the weakness of the position which English 

 geologists have been contented with for the last ten years, 

 in believing that every thing may be accounted for by de- 

 tached masses of floating ice, set in motion by currents. 



It is a remarkable feature of the northern peninsula, that 

 the descent from the great back bone of the country towards 

 the west, constituting Norway, is by a series of comparatively 

 short, steep, deep valleys, generally very bare, or only pre- 

 senting certain alluvia in the lower and wider spaces towards 

 the sea, while the slope towards the east, constituting Sweden, 

 is gentle and open, with an enormous abundance of detrital 

 accumulations spreading over all for many miles, from the 

 flanks of the hills, where they reach to a great elevation. It 

 was my fortune to pass across the Plateau from Norway 

 into Sweden, and I felt myself to have been quite unprepared 

 for the accumulations which I met with in the lee of the hills, 

 immediately on descending from the bare striated col above 

 described. The matter took the form of vast terraces, with 

 promontories of the superior stretching into the inferior, and 

 while the surface matter was always water-worn and water- 



