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E have seen in the preceding chapters that the mountains of Scandinavia, Scotland, and North Wales have served, during the glacial period, as so many independent centres for the dispersion of erratic blocks, just as at present the ice-covered continent of North Greenland is sending down ice in all directions to the coast, and filling Baffin's Bay with floating bergs, many of them laden with fragments of rocks.

Another great European centre of ice-action during the post-pliocene period was the Alps of Switzerland, and I shall now proceed to consider the chronological relations of the extinct Alpine glaciers to those of more northern countries previously treated of.

The Alps lie far south of the limits of the northern drift described in the foregoing pages, being situated between the 44th and 47th degrees of north latitude. On the flanks of these mountains, and on the subAlpine ranges of hills or