GEOLOGY. 291 



upper part of the sound has much drift-wood, chiefly small pine trees, 

 weather-worn and water-logged, and some wreck-wood. Bones and skel- 

 etons of whales are numerous. Drift-wood and bones of whales were ob- 

 served several miles inland, and high above high-water mark at least thirty 

 feet. Whales' skeletons were also seen high up on the Thousand Islands. 

 These circumstances, connected with the fact that seal-fishers and whalers 

 state their belief in the shallowing of these seas, led the author to think 

 that Spitzbergen and the adjacent islands are emerging from the sea at a 

 rate even more rapid than that at which some parts of Norway have been 



shown to be rising. 



THE MAELSTROAL 



Of late years, even the existence of the Maelstrom on the coast of Nor- 

 way has been doubted. The ancient accounts of its terrible power were 

 doubtless fabulous; but the Maelstrom actually exists, and is sometimes 

 dangerous. M. Hagerup, minister of the Norwegian marine, has recently 

 given a reliable account of it, in reply to some questions from a correspond- 

 ent of the Boston Recorder. The vast whirl is caused by the setting in and 

 out of the tides between Lofoden and Mosken, and is most violent half way 

 between ebb and flood tide. At flood and ebb tide it disappears for about 

 half an hour, but begins again with the moving of the waters. Large ves- 

 sels may pass over it safely in serene weather, but in a storm it is perilous 

 to the largest craft. Small boats are not safe near it, at the time of its 

 strongest action, in any weather. The Avhirls in the Maelstrom do not, as 

 was once supposed draw vessels under the water, but by their violence they 

 fill them with water, or dash them upon the neighboring shoals. M. Hage- 

 rup says : 



" In winter, it not unfrequently happens that, at sea, a bank of clouds 

 shows a west storm, with heavy sea, to be prevailing there, while further 

 in, on the coast, the clear air shows that on the inside of the West-tjord 

 (east side of Lofoden), the wind blows from the land, and sets out through 

 the tjord from the east. In such cases, especially, an approach to the Mael- 

 strom is in the highest degree dangerous; for the stream and under-current, 

 from opposite directions, work there together to make the whole passage 

 one single boiling cauldron. At such times appear the mighty whirls which 

 have given it the name of Maelstrom (that is, the whirling or grinding 

 stream), and in which no craft whatever can hold its course. For a steamer, 

 it is, then, quite inadvisable to attempt the passage of the Maelstrom during 

 a winter storm; and for a sailing vessel, it may be also bad enough in time 

 of summer, should there fall a calm or a light wind, whereby the power of 

 the stream becomes greater than that of the wind, leaving the vessel no 

 longer under command." 



GEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS. 



The following is an abstract of a paper on the above subject, recently 

 read before the Boston Society of Natural History, by Dr. C. F. Winslow: 



"The general idea set forth in the communication is, that the earth, in 

 falling to the sun, and following the same law of gravitation that governs 

 any spheroidal or irregular body in falling to the ground, must change the 

 inclination of its poles to the plane of the ecliptic with every translation of 

 matter from one part of the mass to the other; that is to say, that its 



