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



a perfect calm. At a very early hour the next morning the wind shifted to the north- 

 north-west, and fell almost entirely, so that when I revisited St. Olof s Stone the sur- 

 face of the water was perfectly smooth. I then found the level of the sea, as the pilot 

 had expected, 3j inches lower than on the preceding evening. This circumstance 

 gave me much confidence in the opinion which he had previously expressed, that the 

 water at Lofgrund was three or four inches above its standard level at the time of 

 my observation. 



The result, then, of my second visit was, that on a moderately calm day, with a slight 

 wind blowing north-north-west, I found the level of the water, on July 4, 1834, two 

 feet three inches and a half below the bottom of the 0, at the end of the figures 

 1820, or 3'58 inches lower than the water in the year 1820, supposing the measure- 

 ment to have been then taken from the base of the last cipher. If it was taken from 

 the base of the figure 8, then the difference between the water-level at the two periods 

 compared would be three quarters of an inch greater. 



It is much to be regretted that in the printed account of the cutting of this and 

 other marks in the year 1820 — 21, no exact mention is made of the state of the sea and 

 direction of the wind. I was merely assured generally that calm days were chosen, 

 and circumstances avoided which are known to cause the Gulf to deviate from its stan- 

 dard level. This precaution I know to have been carefully attended to at Oregrund. 



Mr. Von Hoff, in his important work entitled " The History of Natural Changes on 

 the Earth's Surface proved by Tradition," has objected to the marks cut on the rocks 

 of this coast that they were made on loose blocks, which may have been heaved up 

 from their position by the sea and ice*. But the greater number of the marks have 

 been set on fixed rocks ; and even where this is not the case, the proof derived from 

 such enormous masses as St. Olof 's Stone is quite unexceptionable. I ought, how- 

 ever, to add, that Mr. Von Hoff has, in the third volume of his work just published, 

 withdrawn his opposition to the validity of the evidence in favour of the rise of land 

 now going on in the Baltic -J-. 



Before I pass from Gefle to another part of Sweden, I may state that Colonel Hall- 

 STROM, to whom we are indebted for an interesting article on the marks made to de- 

 termine the rate of change of level in the Bothnian gulf:}:, informed me that the 

 inhabitants of the opposite coast of Finland are as fully persuaded as those between 

 Gefle and Torneo that either the waters are falling in their country or the land rising. 

 The same gentleman observed, that notwithstanding the fluctuations of level in the 

 Baltic at certain seasons, he never happened to examine any of the ancient marks, 

 either on the Swedish or Finland side of the gulf, without finding the water below the 

 marks. He also gave me some marl of a violet colour, which he had lately brought 

 from Nadendal, near Abo, in Finland, found at the height of sixty feet above the level 



* Geschichte der Veranderungen, Part I. p. 425. 



t Ibid. vol. iii. p. 316. 



X Kongl.Vetenskaps-Academiens Handlingar, Stockholm, 1823, p. 30. 



