8 9 



amount on the humidity of the atmosphere. This would be heaviest 

 in the high plateau, and were other conditions favourable the low 

 lying land of what is now the North Sea could hardly have a snow- 

 fall sufficient to form ice-sheets thousands of feet thick, whatever 

 might be the condition of the adjacent Norwegian ice-sheet. Indeed 

 from Lieutenant Ryder's East Greenland Expedition we learn 

 that the plateau of Greenland often exhibits bare ground during the 

 summer, whilst this is the rule near the coasts, and that herbage 

 sufficient to support numbers of reindeer, musk-oxen, hares, lemmings 

 and other animals grows in these districts."* From this I think we 

 must infer that even during the glacial period there could have 

 been no continuity of an ice-sheet extending from Scandinavia to 

 England. 



Supposing, however, that this were possible, and that such an 

 ice-sheet enveloped the coast lines, by what power is it to traverse 

 the sea-bottom (even if elevated) and to ascend up to our east coast 

 and there deposit its debris high up on the cliffs of Cromer and 

 elsewhere over England ? Now the area of Scandinavia is only an 

 eighth part of that of Greenland ; if therefore the present Greenland 

 ice-sheet is unable to cover its own shores, much less to cross over 

 Davis Strait — which is about ioo miles wide — how much less could 

 an ice-sheet from Scandinavia cross the 300 miles of the North Sea 

 and sweep over the British Isles ? Evidently it is no use appealing 

 to the existing order of affairs m Greenland to support this theory. 

 We will turn now to Scandinavia and see if there is evidence to be 

 found of the existence of such an ice-sheet in glacial times — for 

 were this true we may expect to find that it has left abundant traces 

 of its action. 



From the well-known power of glaciers in polishing, grinding 

 down and scoring with striae the hardest rocks over which they pass, 

 we should expect to find that all the rocks and small islands over 

 which this vast ice-sheet, 5,000ft. thick, spread in leaving the shores 

 of Norway for our own, had been planed down, smoothed and 

 striated, and all sharp edges removed. Now off the coast of Norway 

 are the well-known Lofoden islands, which lie within the Arctic 

 circle and must have been enveloped in the great ice-sheet. Of 

 these, Mr. Williams, writing in the Quarterly Journal of Science 

 says,f "Northwards these rocks gradually progress in magnitude, 

 until they become mountains of 3,000 to 4,000ft. in height .... the 

 remarkably angular and jagged character of these rocks . . . renders 

 it very easy to trace the limits of glaciation on viewing them from a 

 distance. The outermost and smallest rocks show from a distance 

 no signs of glaciation." How, we may ask, if the Scandinavian 

 ice-sheet was big enough to cross the ocean was it possible for these 

 jagged rocks to escape being cut down, worn and denuded by 

 ice-action ? 



Another observer, Karl Petersen, writing in Nature, I gives 

 evidence that the ice in glacial times, which gathered on the 



* Geographical Journal, 1893, Vol. 1, p. 43. 

 fVol. vii, 232-233. 

 I Vol. xxxii, p. 202. 



