On the Geology of the Baltic. 351 
century, by the united fleets of the Swedish and Danish monarchs ; 
they expected to starve him out, or force him to engage with his few 
ships to a disadvantage. He made a ditch or canal from the lake 
to the Baltic, through which he carried his vessels to sea, leaving his 
enemies blockading the entrance of the branch of the lake.’ The 
line of this ditch would necessarily be the same as that of the 
modern canal. In such a trench a house may have been built. The 
trench may have been subsequently filled up with wind-driven ma- 
terials ; against which supposition there is nothing positive on record 
in the case; for though Sir Charles states that the superincumbent 
matter was stratified, and of marine origin, he only alludes to the 
banks of the sides of present canal at the spot, and not to the mat- 
ter actually above the house, which indeed he never saw. On the 
contrary, there is something in the record positively in favour of our 
surmise, for Sir Charles ascertained that the sand immediately in con- 
tact with the remains of the house was of the fine kind which is ac- 
cumulated by the wind. Behold, then, a possible modern origin for 
this hut, without any necessity of supposing a comparatively modern 
submersion of the land sixty-four feet under the sea! 
It is of course to be feared that there has been some rashness in 
assuming the dip and subsequent re-emergence of the land since the 
hut was formed and inhabited. Such rashness is not to be wondered 
at, for a geologist in the condition of a determined partiality for a 
particular theory, is much as Mrs Slipslop, in her conversation with 
Joseph Andrews, described her sex to be in analogous circumstances : 
‘If we like a man, the lightest hint sophisticates.. When a man of 
science likes a theory, the lightest hint (accordant with it) sophis- 
ticates. The modern geologist is so determined that the land shall 
move up and down, to account for every trace of marine formations 
above the present level of the sea, that whatever falls in with that 
view is accepted without challenge or investigation, while the most 
elaborate display of facts that even seems or tends to hint at a different 
way of explaining such phenomena is made but light of. The error 
is part of a larger one, resting on an oracular dictum of modern times, 
that we can only explain ancient phenomena by causes which we see 
in operation at the present time ; whereas the causes which actually 
operated may not be now under observation, and, if we confine our- 
selyes solely to those now visibly working, we may pitch upon wrong 
ones. The paucity of theoretical wisdom in modern science is illus- 
trated by such things. With regard to the change in the relative 
level of seas and lands, as it appears to be a universal phenomenon 
(for from every continent it is now reported), why may not the idea 
of a fall of the sea apply to it as well as the local one of a rise of 
the land, which Playfair only preferred because he thought the phe- 
nomenon local?* ‘These gentlemen do not see that their own asser- - 
* Professor Playfair’s remarks were as follows :—‘ The imagination natu- 
rally feels less difficulty in conceiving that an unstable fluid like the sea, which 
