548 
NORMAL DIRECTION OF THE STRIDE EXCENTRIC. 
great block of Stor-stens-kulle stands out upon the very summit of a hill) have their 
angles as fresh, as if never affected by other than ordinary atmospheric agency. 
The prevalence of the rounded or worn blocks in the mass of detritus or osar 
trainees, whilst the angular blocks are chiefly on their surface, are features well- 
explained, if we suppose that the more violent current by which the one class of 
boulders was hurled on, was succeeded by other south-flowing streams, in which 
ice-floes were transported. 
Whilst we have stated that the normal and general direction of the striae in 
Sweden is either from north to south, or from north-north-west to south-south- 
east, we know that there are many exceptions. Such, for example, are certain marks 
near Gottenburg and Uddevalla observed by M. Forchhammer, which proceed from 
east to west. There again, we should say, that such striae are merely in the direc- 
tion which certain local masses of drift have taken, and which have been carried 
from the east into the fiords, or mouths of lateral valleys, on the west. And here 
it must be recollected, that numerous inlets around these estuaries, such as Udde- 
valla and Gottenburg, and that above Christiania, before adverted to (p. 329), indi- 
cate by the presence of marine shells, often at considerable heights, that the sea 
occupied these lands till a very recent period. 
But such aberrations from the normal direction perfectly concur with the excen- 
tric shedding off of the debris indicated in Lapland by M. Bohtlinghk. For, as we 
have before shown, this great drift is northern in reference to Russia and Germany 
only. To the Icy Sea it is a southern 1 , to the Yorkshire coast an eastern, and to 
the Timan ridge a western drift. Northern Scandinavia was, therefore, a vast, 
crystalline nucleus, which owing, as we believe, to its sudden elevations, accompa- 
nied by great environing depressions, poured off its detritus at one time vehementlv, 
at another more tranquilly, and thus accomplished those residual phsenomena w'hich 
it has been so difficult to explain. We are further induced to suppose, that the 
highest portions of this chain, extending from the Dovre-feld in Norway to the axis 
of Russian Lapland, constituted a region of glaciers which, broken up by some of 
the oscillations alluded to, sent forth numerous icebergs, which were often floated 
away to great distances before they melted, and deposited the erratic blocks de- 
scribed in the preceding chapter. 
* M. Siljestrdm lias already shown, that the translation of the detritus from the Scneehatten and highest 
points of the Norwegian axis has taken place from south to north and from south-south-east to north- 
north-west, thus completing the proofs of an excentric Scandinavian movement. (See the arrows upon 
the Map, PI. VI., and the Postscript to this Chapter.) 
