EXTINCT ANIMALS 



place in the level of the ground. The change 

 need not be a continuous or a rapid one. It 

 took some two or three centuries for that temple 

 to sink into the water, and a few more centuries 

 for it to come out again. 



Such movement is always going on. It does 

 not occur very obviously on our own coast. It 

 can be seen to some extent on the Devonshire 

 coast at Plymouth. You get evidence of it in 

 what are called raised beaches above the level 

 of the ocean. In Norway this kind of thing is 

 very obvious. In South America it is going on, 

 and has been going on at an enormous rate for 

 the last thousand years. Probably a great 

 part of the height of the Andes has been acquired 

 within the last few thousand years by rapid 

 rising. When the original sailors landed on 

 the coast of Chili in the sixteenth century or 

 thereabouts they are said in one spot to have 

 chiselled on the rocks an inscription. Here 

 you see an imaginary sketch of them doing so 

 (Fig. 24). It is said, but I cannot find any 

 accurate record of it, that such inscriptions have 

 been discovered now, raised high up on the cHff 

 (see Fig. 25). We know that many kinds of sea- 

 shells are found 200 and 300 feet up the cliffs 



38 



