The country passed over to-day consisted of low rocky hills of soft outline, with alluvial plains between. It is impossible for any person of common powers of observation to fail to be struck with the appearance of the rocky surface presented around Gottenburg and along the road upon which I was now travelling. All the abruptnesses and asperities usually seen upon rocks are here ground off: all is smooth and rounded. Here you see great ridges, resembling the hull of a ship turned keel uppermost, both in the general form and the smoothness of surface. There you see great slopes, as straight and smooth as an ashlar wall. Sometimes a kind of trough or channel is seen between rising ridges, and of this the sides are usually quite smooth. In general, there has been a certain weathering of the exterior, though leaving the general plane--if I may use such an expression--in its original state. Where the surface has been from any cause protected from the elements, the smoothing is clearly seen to be a true mechanical polish; that is to say, not a result of some causes connected with the formation of the rock, but an effect proceeding from some external agent which has operated on the rocks after they had been thrown into their present arrangement as a surface for this part of the earth. On these preserved surfaces we find striæ or scratches, evidently a portion of the general operation, whatever it was; and these striæ, as well as the channellings and ridges, lie in one direction--namely, _compass_ N. E. and S. W. In numberless instances in travelling to-day I took out my compass to test this point, where much struck by the appearances, and the result was invariable. The valley of the Gotha Elv lies from north to south; but this seems merely to have exposed it to being impressed with these singular appearances. There are several hill-faces which may be considered as an exception, being rough and cliffy, sometimes with a talus of débris descending from below the cliffy front, as in Salisbury Crags near Edinburgh. In all such instances the face of the cliff is to the _south-west_; and where this occurs in a valley, the opposite hill-face is invariably smooth, with rounded surfaces, showing as if the smoothing agent had moved from the north-east, failing to press against faces turned away from that point of the compass, but bearing hard upon such as were presented towards it. It was most impressive and interesting to read in these facts so strange a tale of grand preterite operations of nature. I had seen some of the few and scattered markings of the same kind which exist on the surface of my own country, but was nevertheless unprepared for the all but universal grinding to which Sweden has been subjected. In Scotland one has to seek for the appearances in nooks of the country; but here they are met at every step. Very often farm establishments, and the inns at which the traveller stops, are placed