554 
REAL AMOUNT OF FORMER GLACIERS. 
grooves and stria on the polished rocks. These vast mounds of drift (derived from 
the breaking up of the rocks) are our lithological substitutes for glaciers, and 
•whether their weight, the nature of their materials, or the plasticity of their mass 
(when in a moist state) be considered, no one can deny that they may have pro- 
duced effects precisely similar to those of the true glacial “ moraine.” 
But whilst we reject the application of the terrestrial glacier theory to Sweden, 
Finland, north- eastern Russia and the whole of northern Germany, — in short, to 
all the low countries of Europe, — we believe, as before stated, that in the axis of 
northern Scandinavia and Lapland (the highest point of which is upwards of 8000 
feet above the sea) arctic glaciers did formerly exist. These glaciers, probably more 
extensive than those which there now prevail, formed, we may imagine, the shores 
of the sea that then covered all the low lands of Sweden, Finland and Russia, and 
bathed, the edges of such glaciers, just as those of the icy sea now advance to the 
ice-bound cliffs of Spitzbergen. The icebergs floating therefrom explain the far 
transport of the large and often subangular blocks, which chiefly occupy the 
surface of these drifted accumulations, and have often been carried to enormous 
distances from their native beds without losing their original outline ; a condition 
perfectly irreconcileable to their transport by water, even were currents capable 
of hurling such huge fragments for hundreds of miles up inclined planes and over 
hills and valleys. 
In bidding adieu to this subject, we are, therefore, far from denying to glaciers 
that which we consider their legitimate agency ; nay, we require the aid of icy 1 " 
masses, detached from them into open seas, to account for certain superficial phe- 
nomena, which without them would, we apprehend, remain perfectly inexplicable 
by any natural operation : but we confidently maintain, that aqueous detrital con- 
ditions will best account for the great diffusion of drift over the surface of the 
globe, and at the same time explain the very general striation and abrasion of the 
rocks, at low as well as high levels, in numerous parallels of latitude. 
In conclusion, we would remind our readers, that exempted as she has been (in 
all her higher lands at least) from any submarine influences, Siberia is entirely free 
from erratic blocks, though environed on three sides by high mountains. From 
this great negative fact, combined with all the positive evidence adduced in this 
chapter, we infer, that without having been beneath the sea, no country can have 
had its surface strewed over with foreign drift or boulders, like European Russia. 
All lands, therefore, in the northern hemisphere which are as void of such drift as 
