CHAP. X. UPRAISED BED OF THE SARDINIAN SEA. 177 



greater than those which are already known to have taken 

 phice within the human period on the borders of the Mediter- 

 ranean, of which I shall now proceed to cite a well-authen- 

 ticated example, observed in Sardinia. 



Rise of the Bed of the Sea to the Height of 300 Feet, in the 

 Human Period, in Sardinia. 



Count Albert de la Marmora, in his description of the geo- 

 logy of Sardinia,* has shown that on the southern coast of 

 that island, at Cagliari and in the neighborhood, an ancient 

 bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living species, and 

 numerous fragments of antique pottery, has been elevated to 

 the height of from seventy to ninety-eight metres above the 

 present level of the Mediterranean. Oysters and other shells, 

 of which a careful list has been published, including the com- 

 mon mussel (^Mytilus edidis), many of them having both valves 

 united, occur, imbedded in a breccia in which fragments of 

 limestone abound. The mussels are often in such numbers 

 as to impart, when they have decomposed, a violet color to 

 the marine stratum. Besides pieces of coarse pottery, a flat- 

 tened ball of baked earthenware, with a hole through its axis, 

 was found in the midst of the marine shells. It is supposed 

 to have been used for weighting a fishing-net. Of this and 

 of one of the fragments of ancient pottery Count de la Mar- 

 mora has given figures. 



The upraised bed of the sea probably belongs, in this 

 instance, to the post-pliocene period; for in a bone breccia, 

 fining fissures in the rocks around Cagliari, the remains of 

 extinct mammalia have been detected; among which is a new 

 genus of carnivorous quadrujDed, named Cynotherium by M. 

 Studiati, and figured by Count de la Marmora in his Atlas 

 (pi. vii.), also an extinct species of Lagomys, determined by 



■•••" Partie Geologique, torn. i. pp. 382, 387. 



