the Land in Scandinavia. •' 41 



In the present state of our knowledge, therefore, there is every 

 reason to believe that certain parts of the Scandinavian Penin- 

 sula are gradually rising, at a rate probably variable, but which 

 recent admeasurements shew may at present be estimated at one 

 foot in twenty-five years. Adopting this fact, we naturally in- 

 quire into its probable cause. Among the ordinary phenomena 

 of volcanic action, we find nothing at all parallel to the case be- 

 fore us. They afford many examples of elevation even to a 

 great extent, but these are all the result of a single impulse, or 

 of a succession of violent impulses, applied within a short space 

 of time. The elevation in Scandinavia is gradual and insensi- 

 ble. The country also, within the historical period, has been re- 

 markably free from what is commonly understood by volcanic 

 action ; there is, consequently, no ground for attributing it to 

 the causes usually assigned for that action. If, however, we 

 define volcanic action, with Humboldt, to be the influence exer- 

 cised by the interior of a planet on its exterior covering, during 

 the different stages of refrigeration, we shall find, in such action, 

 a cause sufficient to account for all the great changes of level 

 which the several parts of our planet have successively under- 

 gone. But this is an extension of the meaning of such action, 

 which is not generally received, and which, indeed, cannot be ad- 

 mitted, until it be more clearly shewn that the true volcanoes 

 have their origin in the high temperature of the interior of the 

 globe. ;Kj^ 



Taking for granted, therefore, what many geological phe'no- 

 mena render highly probable, that the temperature of the globe 

 was in early limes much higher than at present, we shall find, 

 in its secular refrigeration, a cause not only for the elevation of 

 ancient mountain-chains, but of the gradual elevation going on 

 in Scandinavia in our own time. To obtain a general idea of 

 the effects of such refrigeration, let us go back to the remote 

 period, when the crust of the earth, even at the poles, was com- 

 paratively slight. In this state the polar, receiving from the 

 sun less heat, would cool more rapidly than the'equatorial re- 

 gions. The contraction consequent upon cooling, would cause a 

 depression parallel to, and an expansion at right angles to, the 

 earth's axis ; in other words, the force of contraction would aid 

 tlie centrifugal, in gradually flattening the earth towards the 



