PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 137 



The importance of the study of organic remains was insisted 

 on as forming a key to geological research. Tliese important 

 records informed us, that all the dry land, with which we are 

 acquainted, had, at some former period of time, been covered 

 with water; that other plants and otlier animals inhabited the 

 earth and sea, under a different state of things, and that there 

 was a gradual succession of animal and vegetable life, until man 

 was created. The lecturer stated, that no human bones were 

 found, unless in the alluvions or newest strata, at the surface, or 

 in caverns. The various meteoric and atmospherical agencies, 

 producing geological changes on the earth's surface, and in the 

 bed of the ocean, were then alluded to : such as the weathering, 

 abrasion and degradation of rocks, together with the effects 

 produced on them, by the expansive force of freezing water, and 

 dislocations caused by hydrostatic pressure. Deposits are formed 

 and consolidations take place, in the bed of the ocean ; and many 

 curious examples were given, of the wonderful changes brought 

 about by the transporting and cutting power of rivers and 

 running streams, whereby the higher lands are worn away and 

 conveyed to the ocean, there to form new strata. 



The lecturer then adverted to the curious circumstance, of the 

 slow but gradual rise of Scandinavia above the waters of the 

 Baltic Sea and German Ocean — a circumstance hinted at by 

 Pliny, Gibbon and others, and recordedhy Celsius a Swedish natu- 

 ralist, 130 years ago, but treated by geologists as an idle fiction. 

 The fact is however established beyond a doubt. Mr. Ryall last 

 year visited Scandanavia; he found that marks cut in the solid 

 rocks, in retired creeks of the Bothnic Gulf, 20 years ago, were 

 several inches above the sea, and similar marks cut 70 years ag^o, 

 were now several feet above the water's surface. Sea shells of 

 the same species as now live in the adjacent waters, were found 

 imbedded in, or adhering to the rocks, at heights from one to two 

 hundred feet above the present level of the sea. A mass of 

 evidence, historical, traditional, and ocular, proves that Scan- 

 danavia is slowly but gradually rising out of the water, at the rate 

 of about three feet in a century. 



The transporting power of currents and tidal streams was next 

 alluded to, and the constant changes they produce in the bed of 

 the ocean ^ and on the coasts of continents and islands. These 

 great streams of water, moving in different directions, and trans- 

 ferring portions of caloric from one locality to another, modify 

 the temperature of different countries and produce changes in 

 VOL. v.— 1835. s 



