20 MR. LYELL ON THE PROOFS OF A GRADUAL RISING OF 



amined it, was washed and almost covered by the ripple on the surface of the water. 

 It is not enumerated by Bruncrona as among those which were cut in 1820 ; but 

 my boatmen and the fishermen on the island said it was cut in 1820. Although 

 occasionally covered by the small waves, it was one inch and a half above the mean 

 level of the water, and would probably have been four inches or more above it on a 

 calm day. 



It has been observed that lichens grow nearly to the water's edge on the rocks 

 skirting the Gulf of Bothnia, and certainly the lower border of this line of vegetation 

 often appears very distinct when viewed at a short distance ; the rock below, where 

 it is alternately wet and dry, remaining of its natural colour, which is usually very 

 much contrasted with that of the surface, where it is coated with lichens. Now it has 

 been proposed to measure and note the distance of this line of vegetation above the 

 sea, and then to determine, after a certain lapse of years, the rate of elevation of the 

 land, by observing how much lower the lichens have descended. With a view of 

 furnishing data to 'future observers for such comparisons, I endeavoured, at Lof- 

 grundet and other places, to ascertain the height of this line of vegetation, but without 

 success, for it always appeared to me undefinable. Not only is it very uneven, but 

 sometimes, after passing over a space of bare rock, we come down again to some 

 straggling lichens growing luxuriantly nearly to the water's edge. 



Von Buch mentions in his Travels* that he found a large quantity of fine-grained 

 red sandstone, used as a building-stone, at Gefle, containing small nodules of asphal- 

 tum. He was told that these stones were found nowhere in situ, but were thrown 

 up by the sea upon the skar, or that line of rocks and islands which bounds the coast 

 off Gefle. I found the shore of the isle of Lofgrund strewed over with these schis- 

 tose red-sandstone blocks. They have the form of large flat slabs, with angular 

 edges, as if they had been just taken from a quarry. They were exposed to a hot 

 sun, and the black pitchy matter was oozing out abundantly from numerous pores. 

 The planes of stratification presented those undulations called ripple-marks. On my 

 inquiring from whence they came, I was assured by the fishermen that a fresh supply 

 of such masses was brought to the coast from time to time by the sea. I remarked 

 that their size was such that the waves could not have power to move them, that 

 there were no rocks like them in the neighbourhood, and that they were not rounded 

 by attrition as if rolled at the bottom of the sea. One of the fishermen replied 

 that the ice might have brought them, and he undertook to show me much larger 

 blocks which had been stranded recently on different parts of the skar. I accord- 

 ingly went to a small island called Hvitgrund in order to see proofs of this fact, 

 and there I observed blocks of red granite, five or six feet in diameter, perfectly free 

 from lichens, amidst other blocks of various sizes which were coloured grey, white, 

 and black, by a coating of these plants. The sailors named other spots where I might 

 see much larger blocks, perfectly bare, or only beginning to be covered, amidst 



* Vol. ii, chap. v. French edition, p. 303. 



