Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/139

glacial time,—i.e., before the Quaternary age—we have not much on which to base our ideas. The immense denudation has so thoroughly altered the physiognomy of the country that we are quite at a loss to reconstruct it. We can only suppose that no great change in the relative heights of the mountain plateaus has taken place and that there are left, perhaps, in the mountain bosses remnants of the original surface. The coast line we are no doubt justified in putting farther outwards than now. The great slope to the ocean deep does not follow the present coast, but is up to 200 kilometers distant, the intervening bank not reaching beyond 400 meters. The flora and fauna of Spitzbergen and Iceland must have immigrated across this now sunken northwestern foreland. Near Storeggen (about 62°) G. O. Sars found, by dredging at 100 to 200 fathoms (200 to 400M.), remains of a littoral fauna and beach shingle, which can only belong to a preglacial coast. It must therefore be a legitimate inference that the country in late preglacial times was, at least at the coast, 200 to 400 meters higher than now.

On the mountains in this high country there now began to gather great snow masses, the climate deteriorating owing to causes that cannot be treated here.^[1] The névés gradually coalesced and the glaciers flowed down to the lower land. If the present numerous fjords had a preglacial existence they must have represented themselves as a close series of deep lakes or fjords into which the glacier soon crept. But beyond such a row of ready outlets no continuous ice margin could possibly grow. The depth of Sognefjord is 1,250 meters, of Hardangerfjord 800 meters, though both are rather shallow at their mouth. If the whole country was elevated 200 to 400 meters, we still would have so deep waters, that any glacier, which could not at once move forward with a thickness of 1,000 meters, would get afloat and be dissolved into icebergs as fast as it could grow. So any advance of inland ice (which necessarily increases but slowly) must