Davis.] 44 [May 3, 



the Dead Sea and the neighboring lakes, the Caspian and the Black Sea, 

 are not ' lakes of glacial erosion,' but hollows otherwise formed, probably 

 by great movements and bending in the earth's crust." (On Glacial 

 Periods, Geol. Soc. Journ., xxxv, 1879, 136, 137.) 



Fr. Ratzel concludes that as water cannot form fjords, and as there is no 

 other sufficient agent except flowing ice, the making of fjords must be as- 

 cribed to the glaciers of the ice period. (Ueber Fjordbildungen an Bin- 

 nenseen, Peterm. Geogr. Mitth. 1880, 393.) 



It may be objected to this that fjord coasts are old and have 

 had a longer preglacial existence as dry land than their glacial 

 and post-glacial ages combined ; that dislocation and ordinary 

 surface erosion through a period long enough to produce deep 

 valleys, and followed by submergence, will account for all the 

 larger forms of fjords ; that the coincidence of the more impor- 

 tant fjord coasts with regions of former glaciation is the result of 

 a cause that governs both, namely the heavy precipitation found 

 wherever moist winds strike a mountainous shore ; that the 

 decrease of glaciers and the appearance of fjords may both be 

 the result — one partly, the other wholly — of the subsidence of 

 a once elevated mountain land ; and that the larger details of form 

 in fjords, as in other old mountain regions, are more dependent 

 on the structure and kind of rock in which they are cut than on 

 the agent which cut them. Moreover the bays and islands on 

 the irregular shores of the Adriatic and in the Grecian and Ma- 

 layan Archipelago, where no one claims that glaciers have acted 

 but where all will admit subsidence following erosion, are 

 similar to the features of fjord coasts, and differ rather in charac- 

 ters of quantity than quality, presumably because of a less eleva- 

 tion and erosion during the first period and a less subsidence 

 since. 



Dana first explained fjords as resulting from denudation followed by sub- 

 mergence; whether the erosion was done by " running water alone, or more 

 or less by glaciers " must be determined by further examination. (Geol. 

 U. S. Expl. Exped., Phila. 1849, 676.) 



Murchison considered fjords most largely the effect of dislocation. 

 (Geogr. Soc. Journ., xl, 1870, p. clxxii. See also Id., Address, xxxiv, 

 1864.) 



Kjerulf states that many of the islands and shores of the Norwegian 

 fjords show rocks that do not belong at such a depth, but rather on a level 

 with the surrounding high country ; he therefore concludes that these deep 



