912 Sir Charles Lyell, on [March 7, 



Eoraan roads, while no evidence of any corresponding subsidence 

 or oscillations of level are discoverable on the site of the city 

 of Naples, which i« only four miles distant in a straight line. 

 Analogous examples of upward and downward movements in other 

 parts of the Mediterranean were cited, such as the sarcophagus 

 of Telmessus in Lycia, described by Sir Charles Fellows ; and the 

 changes in Candia, recently established by Captain Spratt, R.N., 

 who has ascertained that the western end of that island has been 

 uplifted 17 feet above its ancient level, while another part of the 

 southern coast has risen more than 27 feet, so that the docks of 

 ancient Grecian ports are upraised, as well as limestone rocks 

 drilled by lithodomi. At the same time the eastern portion of 

 Candia (an island about 200 miles long,) has sunk many feet, 

 causing the ruins of several Greek towns to be visible under water. 

 Looking beyond the limits of the Mediterranean, the buried Hindoo 

 temple of Avantipura in Cashmere, with its 74 pillars, described 

 by Dr. Thomson and Major Cunningham, were mentioned, and 

 how their envelopment in lacustrine silt, at some period after the 

 year 850 of our era, had caused them and their statues to escape the 

 fury of the Mahometan conqueror Sicander, who bore the nam- 

 of the idol-breaker. {Principles of Geology, 9th edition, p. 762.) 

 The gradual subsidence of the coast of Greenland, and the eleva- 

 tion of a large part of Sweden, century after century, were also 

 instanced ; and lastly, the latest event of the kind, yielding to no 

 other in the magnitude of its geological and geographical import- 

 ance, the earthquake of New Zealand, of January 23rd, 1855. 

 The shocks of this convulsion extended over an area of land and sea 

 three times as large as the British Isles ; after it had ceased, it was 

 found that a tract of land, in the immediate vicinity of Wellington, 

 comprising 4600 square miles, or nearly equal to Yorkshire in di- 

 mensions, had been upraised from one to nine feet, and a range of 

 hiils, consisting of older rocks, uplifted vertically, while the tertiary 

 plains to the east of it remained unmoved ; so that a precipice, nine 

 feet in perpendicular height was produced, and is even said to be 

 traceable for 90 miles inland, from north to south bordering the plain 

 of the Wairarapa. In consequence of a rise of five feet of the land 

 on the north side of Cook's Strait, near Wellington and Port 

 Nicholson, the tide had been almost excluded from the river Hutt, 

 while on the south side of the same straits in the Middle Island, 

 where the ground has sunk about five feet, the tide now flows several 

 miles further up the river Wairau than before the earthquake.* 



* Some memoranda respecting the changes in physical geogra- 

 phy, effected during the earthquake of January 23rd, 1855, will be 

 found in the Appendix of a new work by the Rev. Richard Taylor, 

 entitled " New Zealand and its Inhabitants," London, 1855. These 



