RELATION BETWEEN ANCIENT AND EXISTING PHENOMENA. 
23 
these limits the coast has few hays, and fewer still of these channel-like indentations. On the 
eastern coast of the continent we observe the same general fact. To the north of the equator 
the coast is singularly even in its outline, until we reach Maine, north of latitude 43°, where, as 
may he seen on a good map, fiords become very numerous, and deep and complex in their long 
windings and ramifications. The same remarks will apply to the eastern continent. The 
fiords of Norway are well known, and this coast is a singular contrast to that of France, Spain, 
and Africa.”* 
The intimate relation between these fiords and the deposit of boulders has been observed by 
several geological writers, who have considered their formation as a part of the history of the 
drift period, having been formed by the grinding, polishing, and grooving action of the immense 
amount of broken rock carried down into the lower depths of the then existing seas. The rocks 
in the neighborhood of the Scandinavian fiords are worn off, polished, and scratched, effects 
which may he traced down even below the level of the sea ; it is in the softer rocks that the 
deepest excavations occur. The lines of grooving are in the same direction with the fiords, and 
as these deep channels could not have been worn by the modern alluvia, or by existing forces, 
and as they have been produced since the tertiary era, the evidence of their production during the 
boulder period is pretty satisfactory. The absence of these two features—drift deposit and 
fiords—in the State of California, is an interesting illustration of the connection between 
geography and geology. 
0 Geology U. S. Expl. Exp., p. 675. 
