Fjords and Siibinerged Valleys of Europe. — Upham. 107 
Inquiring by what means the fjords of Norway received 
their excavations to depths that now are 2,000 to 4,000 feet 
beneath the sea level, I believe that its explanation is found 
chiefly in river erosion permitted by epeirogenic movements. 
The early Pleistocene uplift of western Africa and the Spanish 
peninsula probably extended to the British Isles and Scandi- 
navia, giving in these northern latitudes snowfall through all 
the year, by which the European ice-sheet was amassed. Dur- 
ing the progress of the uplift, to its culmination in the Ice 
age, perhaps 100,000 years elapsed, affording sufficient time 
for the rivers to cut the submarine valleys and the deep fjords. 
For a long period northern Europe was enveloped by snow 
and ice, which attained great thickness and weight, averaging 
probably a half mile in depth on an area of about 2,000,000 
square miles. Under its weight the land sank to a maximum 
in the Scandinavian peninsula of about 1,000 feet, as deter- 
mined by Baron De Geer, below its present hight; and the 
ice sheet, with the restoration of low altitude and temperate 
climate on its border, was rapidly melted away, the unbur- 
dened land meanwhile rising from its subsidence. The epeiro- 
genic deformation was doubtless greatest along the conti- 
nental borders, and it may have permitted the Scandinavian 
high plateau to rise and sink and again rise, while the conti- 
nental margin now beneath the sea underwent only a small 
part of the amount of oscillation that the fjords indicate for the 
interior of the country. 
It seems needful further to add only a few words that 
attention may be directed also to the well known stitdies by 
Lindenkohl, Spencer, and others, of hydrographic surveys on 
the Atlantic coast of Canada and the United States and in the 
West Indies, and of Davidson on the Pacific coast of the 
United States and of Lower California, which show for North 
America an early Pleistocene uplift of similar altitude as on 
the east side of the Atlantic in the Old World. The fjords 
the "Bottomless Pit," is found by soundings near lat. 5° N. on the 
African coast (Scottish Geog. Mag., Ill, 217-238, with charts and 
submarine profiles, May, 1887; Proc. A. A. A. S., XLI (1892), 171-173). 
The submerged valleys of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts 
have been recently studied by Prof. Edward Hull, who writes that 
■"the great uplift, presumably reaching its maximum at the commence- 
ment of the Glacial epoch, is conclusive" (Nature, LVII, 582, April 21, 
1898: LVIII, 51, May 19, 1898). 
