•^145 Professor Hansteen’s Reinarlis made on a Journey 
gerfield, where no such masses of solid ice are to be found, is a 
thing more difficult to be accounted for. Our assumptions with 
regard to the line of snow, become, in this manner, less certain. 
May not the different specific component parts of mountains, 
give them a different capacity for retaining heat? Methinks I 
have somewhere read a remark, that hills containing metals are 
unfavourable to vegetation, insomuch that woods seldom thrive 
on them. The electro-chemical operation which such a combi- 
nation must of necessity produce, may probably decompose the 
vapours dissolved in the atmosphere, and thus promote the crys- 
tallization of snow and ice. I believe Dean Herzberg has at- 
tempted an explanation of this difficulty ; and it is to be wished 
that he would publish his opinion on the subject. None can 
better judge of an object than those who have it daily before their 
eyes, and the matter seems to me worthy of investigation. 
On the west side of the Fiord, south-west from the parsonage 
house, lies the old house of Aga. The buildings about this seat 
are of uncommon size and age, and constructed in a very singu- 
lar manner. One chamber in particular is very remarkable. 
One beam is thicker than two of the largest of such as we have 
at present. The doors are as large as church doors. There 
are neatly built cellars below ; there is a burying vault and a 
beautiful fruit garden. In short, this house is distinguished in 
all respects from all other timber buildings ; and is supposed to 
have been erected in the time of Magnus the Crowned, (Mag- 
nus Erlingsen ?) At this seat also, lived several of the illustrious 
men of Hardanger, such as Bryniolfr Johnsen, who is supposed 
to have been the same person who is so often mentioned in the 
history of Hacon the old ; his son Provost Eric Bryniolf, who 
was alive in King Eric the priest-hater’s time in 1298, and who 
is said to have been drowned by the headland near Hestham- 
mer, in commemoration of which accident, a stone-cross was set 
np, which is said to be still standing there. The last lies buried 
in Ullensvang Church, at least there is to be seen there a grave- 
stone of white marble, with this inscription ; Here lies Sygurth 
Bryniolf ’s son at Aga. Here also lived Thormodaga, a man 
who has much benefited the parish of Kintseroig, since he was 
the first who introduced into it apple-trees, by planting a 
kind of apple, which is still called Thormod’s apple. The first 
