OF CENTRAL CANADA PART III. 159' 



The sinking of the sea would appear at first thought to be the 

 more rational explanation of this phenomenon ; but if we look to 

 existing Nature, we find no instance of the actual falling of the sea,, 

 whilst we have many well-proved examples of the actual rising and 

 sinking of the land. In connection with this inquiry, it must be 

 borne in mind that the sea cannot go down or change its level at one 

 place without doing the same generally all over the world. 



To afford a few brief illustrations, it may be observed that on 

 several occasions within the present century, large portions of the 

 Pacific coast of South America have been raised bodily above the 

 sea, leaving beds of oysters, mussels, &c., exposed above high-water 

 mark. The phenomenon, to the inhabitants of the coast, appeared 

 naturally to be due rather to a sinking of the waters than to an 

 actual elevation of the land ; but at a certain distance north and 

 south of the raised districts, the relative levels of land and sea remain 

 practically unaltered : and hence, if the sea had gone down within 

 the intervening space, to the extent indicated, its surface must have 

 presented an outline of this character *\^ f \ a mani- 



fest impossibility. 



The land is also known to be slowly rising and sinking in 

 countries far removed from centres of volcanic activity. Careful 

 observations have shown, for example, that the northern parts of 

 Sweden and Finland are slowly rising, and the south and south- 

 eastern shores of the Scandinavian peninsular are slowly sinking : 

 whilst around Stockholm there is no apparent change in the levels 

 of land and sea. The whole of the western coast of Greenland 

 is inferred to be slowly sinking : buildings erected on the shore by 

 early missionaries, being now in places under water. A slow move- 

 ment of depression is likewise taking place along the shores of Cape 

 Breton and Nova Scotia generally j and, probably also, to some 

 extent, on the Atlantic sea-board of the United States. On the 

 shores of Newfoundland, of Cornwall, and other districts, examples 

 occur of sub-marine forests, or of the remains of modern trees, in 

 their normal positions of growth, below low-water mark ; whilst in 

 neighbouring localities no change of level appears to have taken 

 place. Besides which, without extending these inquiries further, we 

 know that many fossiliferous strata are hundreds, and even thou- 

 sands, of feet above the present sea-level. On the top of the Colling- 



