300 COSMOS. 



Sweden and Finland, from Solvitzborg on the limits of North- 

 ern Scania past Gefle to Tornea, and from Tornea to Abo, 

 experiences a gradi&l rise of four feet in a century, the south- 

 ern part of Sweden is, according to Neilson, undergoing a 

 simultaneous depression.* The maximum of this elevating 

 force appears to lie in the north of Lapland, and to diminish 

 gradually to the south towards Cahnar and Solvitzborg. 

 Lines marking the ancient level of the sea in pre-historic times 

 are indicated throughout the whole of Norway,f from Cape 

 Lindesnees to the extremity of the North Cape by banks of 

 shells identical with those of the present seas, and which have 

 lately been most accurately examined by Bravais during his 

 long winter sojourn at Bosekop. These banks lie nearly 650 feet 

 nbove the present mean level of the sea, and reappear, accord- 

 ing to Keilhau and Eugene Robert, in a north-north-west direc- 

 tion on the coasts of Spitzbergen, opposite the North Cape. 

 Leopold von Buch, who was the first to draw attention to the 

 high banks of shells at Tromsoe (latitude 69 40'), has, how- 

 ever, shown that the more ancient elevations on the North Sea 

 appertain to a different class of phenomena from the regular 

 and gradual retrogressive elevations of the Swedish shores in 

 the Gulf of Bothnia. This latter phenomenon, which is well 

 attested by historical evidence, must not be confounded with the 

 changes in the level of the soil occasioned by earthquakes as 

 on the shores of Chili and of Cutch, and which have recently 

 given occasion to similar observations in other countries. It 



1763, sought to explain the causes of the changes in the relative levels 

 of the land and sea, basing his views on the early calculations of Celsius, 

 Kalm, and Dalin. He broaches some confused ideas regarding the pos- 

 sibility of an internal growth of rocks, but finally declares himself in 

 favour of an upheaval of the land by earthquakes, "although," he 

 observes, " no such rising was apparent immediately after the earthquake 

 of Egersund, yet the earthquake may have opened the way for other 

 causes producing such an effect." 



* See Berzelius, Jahrsberickt i'iber die Fortscliritte der physischen 

 Wiss., No. 18, s. 686. The islands of Saltholm opposite to Copenhagen, 

 and Bjb'rnholm, however, rise but very little Bjbrnholm scarcely one foot 

 in a century; see Forchhammer, in Pliilos. Magazine, 3rd Series, 

 vol. ii. p. 309. 



h Keilhau, in Nyt Mag. for Naturvid., 1832, bd. i., pp. 105254; 

 bd. ii. p. 57; Bravais, Sur les lignes d'ancien niveau de la Mcr, 

 1843, pp. 15-40. See also Darwin " on the Parallel Roads of Glen-Roy 

 and Lochaber," in Philos. Trans, for 1839, p. 60. 



