Revieiv and Comment. 
361 
rectly to glacial erosion. Probably nine out of every ten lie 
in hollows in the drift. 
Dr. Andre M. Hansen 3B thinks he has proven the Pleistocene 
origin of the Norwegian fjords. He maintains that it is im¬ 
possible for an inland ice sheet coming from the highlands of 
Scandinavia to pass the row of close set fjords that deeply in¬ 
dent the coast of Norway. He says that in the last advance of 
the ice, the boulders of highland origin which it brought were 
left at considerable heights until the inner ends of the fjords 
were reached, when they suddenly drop down to the level of the 
old sea beaches. 
On the east the same advance of the ice carried boulders into 
Prussia. But the western coast of Norway has been glaciated 
up to 1,800 feet above sea level. Hence he concludes that, 
since this could not happen in the presence of the fjords, it 
must have been done before they were excavated. This he 
thinks, demonstrates the origin of the fjords in Pleistocene time 
and he infers also their ice-made character. The writer has 
never seen the coast of Norway, but without such special infor¬ 
mation as would come from a study of the- region it seems to 
him that, in view of the facts that (a) the fjords are excavated 
in hard rock, and ( b ) that Scandinavia has long been and still 
is in a state of oscillation, and (c) that the boulders mentione 
by Dr. Hansen halt at the old sea beaches, the most simple and 
natural explanation of that fact would be the submergence of 
the peninsula up to the level of the old sea beaches at the head 
of the fjords in late Pleistocene time. This submergence cer¬ 
tainly took place at some time and what time more opportune 
than when Scandinavia carried a great and presumably uncom¬ 
fortable load of boulder-clad ice on its back from which dirty 
water was constantly trickling down its face. * 
Dana, Upham, and others have shown pretty conclusively 
that the fjords of New England are of Tertiary age and that 
the continent stood then many hundreds of feet higher than it 
id in glacial times. The fjords were thus the work of the very 
rapid streams which this continental elevation produced. 
Reasoning from analogy we might infer that the Norwegian 
Nature, vol. 49, p. 364. 
