716 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



fessor G. Holm, who has visited the place, confirms the truth of this 

 observation. 



On the island " Jungfrun," or, as it was formerly called, " Blak- 

 uUa," Linne also found evidence of former higher water levels. He 

 says : 



On the shore, at the foot of the rock, were deep cavities and oblong channels 

 bored and hollowed out by the waves of the sea. Even on the highest rocks 

 undulatory formations were found, showing that the sea had formerly raged 

 there. Large blocks of polished stone had been thrown up in piles at a stone's 

 throw from the shore, and even in the valleys between the highest mountains 

 were similar stone piles completely overgrown with Lichene crustaceo leproso, 

 a sign that the waves did not spend their fury here yesterday. 



But it was particularly on Gotland that Linne found an oppor- 

 tunity, on a larger scale, to observe shore formations of a time when 

 the level of the water was higher than now. On the trip between 

 Korpeklint and Lummelund he saw how — 



the road, which was full of stone flakes, was constructed and repaired v^ith 

 small, round pebbles, which were lying around everywhere and were used 

 instead of ordinary earth. These round pebbles, although lying so far up 

 along the top of the ridge, testified to the fact that the sea had polished them 

 and massed them together. One may imagine that when the sea laid the 

 foundation of this land the ridge was at first a shoal, on the sides of which 

 the slowly retreating water constantly threw up sand and gravel. 



This ridge of which Linne speaks, and the origin of which he cor- 

 rectly explains, is of great geological interest. According to the 

 government geologist, H. Hedstrom, it is a beach of the Ancylus 

 Lake, at which period, as is well known, the Baltic Sea was an inland 

 lake of enormous size, cut off from direct communication with the 

 ocean. 



But Linne was to find still greater evidences of the increase of 

 land at Kapellshamn, in the northern part of the island, and at 

 Hoburgen, in the southern. 



" Coral strands " I call the beaches that were seen on the east side of 

 Kapellshamn, as they were very wide and covered with white and gray blocks 

 of stone, * * * This shore had a wavelike formation, like a furrowed field, 

 with long, small, convex ridges running parallel with the harbor and growing 

 higher and higher farther inland, so that the inner ridge was always a little 

 higher than the one nearer the shore. They were all quite bare and entirely 

 composed of blocks of coral, but those found farther inland gradually became 

 covered with surface soil. Here we had the very clearest evidence of the 

 annual growth of the land by means of these corals, or Madrcpora, which can 

 grow nowhere except in the depths of the sea, from whence they are cast up 

 on the shore, thus increasing the mass of the land. * * * 



* * * Still more remarkable is his description of the analogous 

 ridges from the eastern coast of the island, near its southern point. 



The annual increase of the land was here so obvious that we may say that 

 we never saw more striking examples, particularly on the eastern shore where 



