293 
Prof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 
Observation, it is distinctly seen tbat between the wbite band pro- 
duced by the biannual rubbing of tke ice and the dark-coloured rock 
which is above it, there is in many cases an undisturbed contour, the 
raammillations, curvatures, and hollows of the one now seen to be 
produced by the ice, run uninterruptedly into the mammillations, 
curvatures, and hollows of the darker rocks above. It seems to me 
that, as year by year the sea recedes, or as the rock creeps upwards, 
it carries with it the characters which were impressed upon it when 
at a lower level, and what is now the dark round lichen-coloured 
rock, a Century ago may have been the clear white bauded rock 
annually scratched and scoured by ice. 
The entrance to Abo, which was the first place we touched at 
upon the Finnish mainland, is up a long winding inlet bounded by 
an undulating country of pinkish granite. Upon the right side as 
we entered, the land rose in places somewhat suddenly from the 
water, but nowhere to any considerable height. Everywhere, kow- 
ever, there was the rounded kummocky character. Upon the kills 
which overlooked the scattered houses and buildings which formed 
the town this was very noticeable. Everywhere there were numbers 
of boulders. 
On the evening of the next day (Aug. 12th), after steering in and 
out between innumerable rocks and islands, we reached Helsingfors, 
a granite-built town standing in a much more open country than 
that around Abo. Some of the limestone causeways contained 
Orthoceras. 
Now comparing these different pieces of mainland which I saw at 
Abo, Helsingfors, and at other points, one with the other, one could 
not fail to be struck with tkeir great similarity, — rounded granitic 
rocks and scattered granitic rocks, some of which are of an immense 
size, were to be seen nearly everywhere. Two travellers who joined 
our ship at Helsingfors, just returned from near Kajana in the far 
north of Finland, gave me the idea of a country filled with winding 
lakes, but not generally differing in character from that which I had 
been looking at. 
Continuing northwards to the White Sea and Arctic Ocean, and 
then winding round the northern end of the Baltic through Finland 
down to the eastern side of the Scandinavian peninsula, a rough 
undulating country covered with lakes, and often strewn with 
boulders, is generally met with. 
The agent which moulded this country into its present form, and 
strewed it so thick with boulders, would, I think, by most geologists, 
be identified as ice, and the ODly argument that would probably 
arise would be as to the way in which it acted. 
A universal covering of ice forming one huge glacier, like that 
which is now supposed to cover the greater part of Northern Green- 
land, might perkaps be the first Suggestion. To explain this, a 
colder climate than that which now exists in these latitudes would 
be necessary, and this in its turn would require some great astrono- 
mical cliange, as a Variation in the obliquity of the Ecliptic, the 
excentricity of the earth’s orbit, the temperature of space, or some 
