40 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OP NATURE. 



water-mark. Now, the Adriatic has again encroached 

 upon the twice raised square ; at high- water, magazines 

 and churches are flooded, and if proper measures are not 

 taken in time, serious injury must inevitably follow. 

 Not far from there, at Zara, superb antique mosaics may 

 be seen, in clear weather, under the water : and, -on the 

 southern side of the island of Bragnitza, at calm sea, 

 your boat glides over long rows of magnificent stone 

 sarcophagi, far below the clear, transparent surface. 



France also bears many an evidence of such changes 

 in place. The unfortunate St. Louis embarked at the 

 spacious port of Aigues Mortes for his ill-fated crusade; 

 the place a harbor no more is now at a mile's dis- 

 tance from shore. Only in the last century, in 1752, 

 an English ship stranded near La Rochelle, on an oyster- 

 bank, and was abandoned. Now the wreck lies in the 

 midst of a cultivated field, thirteen feet above sea, and 

 around it the industrious inhabitants have gained over 

 two thousand acres of fertile land in less than twenty- 

 five years. England presents similar instances ; thus, the 

 bay at Hithe, in Kent, was formerly considered an ex- 

 cellent harbor; it is now, in spite of great pains and 

 much labor bestowed on it, firm land and very good 

 pasture for cattle. 



These gradual and almost imperceptible changes of land 

 have probably been most carefully observed in Sweden, 

 where already, in the times of Celsius, the people be- 

 lieved that the water was slowly withdrawing from the 

 land. The great geologist Buch has since proved that, 

 north of the province of Scania, Sweden is rising at the 



