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1. Notes for a Comparison of the Glaciation of the West of Scotland with that of Arctic Norway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

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Extract

In the course of the detailed investigations which, during the past six or seven years, have been carried on by the officers of the Geological Survey into the history of the glacial period in Britain, the desire naturally arose to compare the phenomena of glaciation so familiar in this country with those of some other region where they might be linked on to the action of still existing glaciers. No other part of Europe offered so many facilities for such a comparison as were to be found in Scandinavia. It was accordingly planned by my colleague, Dr John Young, and myself, to visit Norway in the summer of 1863. Unforeseen circumstances delayed the journey, and ultimately deprived me of the companionship of my friend.

Type
Proceedings 1865-66
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1866

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References

page 531 note * “Norway and its Glaciers.” 8vo. 1853. Mr Chambers also has referred to the striated rocks in different parts of Norway in his “Tracings of the North of Europe.” 1850.

page 531 note † Esmark. “Edin. New Phil. Journal,” vol. ii. p. 116 et seq. (1826). In this paper the former presence of land ice over large areas from which it is now absent, and its powerful influence as a geological agent of abrasion, are, for the first time, distinctly recognised. The illustrations are taken from the south of Norway.

page 531 note ‡ Hörbye. “Observations sur les phénomènes d'erosion en Norvége.”— Programme de l' Université de Christiania pour 1857. The author gives a careful resumé of all the observations made by himself and others upon the direction of the striæ on the rocks of Norway, and adds a number of maps, one of which shows the outward radiation of the striæ from the central mountain mass of Scandinavia. Yet he commits himself to no theory as to the nature of the agent by which the striæ were produced. In a concluding section upon the glacial theory, he says:—“II est vrai sans doute qu'en général li direction des stries est paralléle à l'avancement des glaciers actuels; mais je ne vois pas que cette circonstance puisse sufflsamment démontrer que les stries ont été gravées par les glaciers.” “Je me joins à cette conclusion, que les sulcatures du Nord se presentent comme des produits d'un agent plus puissant et plus général que les glaciers dont l'action conserve toujours un caractére plus local.” But he does not indicate what this more powerful and more general agent may be.

page 531 note § Kjeruxlf. “Uber das Friktions-Phaenomen.” Christiania. 8vo. 1860. See also Programme de l“Université de Christiania pour 1860, and Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Geol. Geselschaft, 1863, p. 619, and plate xvii.

page 531 note ‖ Sexe. “Om Sneebræen Folgefon.” Christiania. Universitetsprogram for andet Halvaar 1864. This paper gives a detailed account, with map and sections, of the Folgefon snow-field and its glaciers, including the wellknown glacier of Bondhuus.

page 532 note * My friend Herr Tellef Dahll, who, in conjunction with Dr Kjerulf, is carrying on the Government Geological Survey of Norway, wrote down for me the following order of superposition of the rocks of the south of Norway. He was not at the time acquainted with the order of succession in the northwest of Scotland, and expressed his surprise and pleasure to find that it corroborated so well the order established by his colleague and himself. I place in parallel columns the Norwegian and Scottish rocks, to show the general parallelism, without wishing to insist that the equivalents suggested here are in each case strictly exact.

This parallelism may require considerable modification, but it is at least important at present in showing that, both in Norway and in Scotland, there is a bottom gneiss covered unconformably by strata containing fossils, and that these strata are again overlaid by an upper and later series of metamorphic rocks of Lower Silurian age.

page 533 note * I have tried to trace the history of this process in the case of the Scottish Highlands, and I may be permitted to refer to “The Scenery of Scotland, viewed in connection with its Physical Geology,” chap. vi.

page 534 note * See a fuller statement of this subject in “Scenery of Scotland,” pp. 125–137.

page 534 note ‡ The singularly ice-worn aspect of the Norwegian coast, as well as its strong resemblance to the west coast of Scotland, was succinctly described by Principal Forbes, “Norway and its Glaciers,” p. 42 et seq.

page 535 note * Although I use the word mountains, there is no definite system of ridges; on the contrary, these fjords must be regarded as indentations along the edge of a great table-land, of which the average level may range from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea, and which serves as the platform on which the wide snowfields lie. See “Norway and its Glaciers,” pp. 190, 232.

page 544 note * See Prof. A. C. Ramsay, “Glaciers of Switzerland Wales,” 2d edition p. 6O.

page 546 note * Norway and its Glaciers, p. 58.

page 546 note † Tracings of the North of Europe, p. 145

page 547 note * North Wales presents a number of illustrations of this remark, such as Cwm Graianog, Cwm Idwal, &c. (see Professor Ramsay's Glaciers of North Wales).

page 547 note † This glacier was noticed by Von Buch, and is mentioned by Principal Forbes. When we visited it, I was not aware that a brief account of it had been given in vol. ii. of “Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers” second series. Mr J. F. Hardy, the writer of that description, started overland from Talvik on the Alten Fjord, and reached the Jökuls Fjord below the glacier, to which he ascended by boat. Like my own party, he did not climb the glacier, but he seems to have regarded it as connected with the snow-field above. Though I did not succeed in ascending the rugged cliffs, I had no doubt that the lower glacier, from its colour, and the steepness and contraction of the gorge above it, is a true glacier rcmanié, and like the Suphelle glacier described by Forbes (“Norway and its Glaciers,” p. 149), is quite disconnected, at least in summer, from the snowfields above.

page 556 note * We did not go further than Hammerfest, but the same contour is retained over the low, tame district that separates Hammerfest from the North Cape.