The Pyrenees, also, still maintain a glacial system, but it is of insignificant importance. This is partly because the altitude is much less than that of the Alps, the culminating point being scarcely more than eleven thousand feet in height. Doubtless, also, it is partly due to the narrowness of the range, which does not provide gathering-places for the snow sufficiently extensive to produce large glaciers. The snow-fall also is less upon the Pyrenees than upon the Alps. As a consequence of all these conditions, the glaciers of the Pyrenees are scarcely more than stationary _névé_-fields lingering upon the north side of the range. The largest of these is near Bagnères de Luchon, and sends down a short, river-like glacier. In Scandinavia the height of the mountains is also much less than that of the Alps, but the moister climate and the more northern latitude favours the growth of glaciers at a much lower level North of the sixty-second degree of latitude, the plateaus over five thousand feet above the sea pretty generally are gathering-places for glaciers. From the Justedal a snow-field, covering five hundred and eighty square miles, in latitude 62°, twenty-four glaciers push outwards towards the German Sea, the largest of which is five miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide. The Fondalen snow-field, between latitudes 66° and 67°, covers an area about equal to that of the Justedal; but, on account of its more northern position, its glaciers descend through the valleys quite to the ocean-level. The Folgofon snow-field is still farther south, but, though occupying an area of only one hundred square miles, it sends down as many as three glaciers to the sea-level. The total area of the Scandinavian snow-fields is about five thousand square miles. In Sweden Dr. Svenonius estimates that there are, between latitudes 67° and 68-1/2°, twenty distinct groups of glaciers, covering an area of four hundred square kilometres (one hundred and forty-four square miles), and he numbers upwards of one hundred distinct glaciers of small size. As is to be expected, the large islands in the Polar Sea north of Europe and Asia are, to a great extent, covered with _névé_-fields, and numerous glaciers push out from them to the sea in all directions, discharging their surplus ice as bergs, which float away and cumber the waters with their presence in many distant places. [Illustration: Fig. 8.--The Svartisen Glacier on the west coast of Norway, just within the Arctic circle, at the head of a fiord ten miles from the ocean. The foot of the Glacier is one mile wide, and a quarter of a mile back from the water. Terminal moraine in front. (Photographed by Dr. L. C. Warner.)]