13 



He then considered if it were possible that the level of the Baltic 

 could have fallen, being, by its connection with the North Sea, a 

 branch of the groat ocean ; and concluded, from the permanency 

 of tlio respective level of the land and water on the coasts of Po- 

 nierania, among the Danish islands, and at some points on the 

 shores of Finland, that the level of the Baltic Sea had undergone 

 no change of level for the last six hundred years. The change 

 observable on the coasts of Sweden, therefore, must be due to an 

 elevation of the land, now gradually, though insensibly, in pro- 

 gress. This rising is estimated to proceed at present at the rate 

 of about one foot in twenty-five years. 



The absence of any record of violent volcanic action in the Scan- 

 dinavian Peninsula, renders it improbable that the rise is due to 

 such a cause. The author referred it, therefore, to the gradual 

 cooling of the crust of the earth, which, by causing a contraction 

 and compression in parts whore the cooling was a maximum tend- 

 ing to elevate other portions of the earth's surface at points or in 

 lines of minimum resistance. 



The centre of the action in Scandinavia, he considered to be 

 in the mountain chains which traverse Norway and Sweden, and 

 Finland, respectively ; and which are mutually connected beyond 

 the head of the Bothnian Gulf: and attributing the original ele- 

 vation of these chains, with Elie de Beaumont, to the secular re- 

 frigeration of the earth, he found in the rise still observable in 

 Scandinavia a relic only of that once powerful action by which 

 these mountain langes were originally projected. He suggested the 

 probability, also, that on other coasts where high mountain ridges 

 ran parallel with the sea, accurate mea>urements of the mean level 

 of the water, in reference to the scarped rocks on th>i coast, if re- 

 peated at certain distant intervals, might make known other gra- 

 dual elevations still in progress, similar to those observable on the 

 shores of the Baltic. 



March 18. 

 Professor RUSSELL, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The following Donations were presented : — 



Exposition Elementaire des Frincipes qui servent de Base h, la 

 Theorie de la Clialeur Rayonnante. Par Pierre Prevost, 



