THE LAND IN CERTAIN PARTS OF SWEDEN. 23 



of the sea near the coast. It is composed principally^ like that before mentioned near 

 Stockholm and Upsala, of the decomposition of the Mytilus edulis, but also contains 

 perfect specimens of the Tellina Baltica, Littorina Uttorea, L. rudis, and Paludina ulva. 



o 



The castle of Abo on the Finland coast has been cited by several writers* as 

 proving that the ground on which it stands has not been elevated, that building 

 being many centuries old and yet close to the water's edge. But Colonel Hallstrom 

 assured me that the base of the walls is ten feet above the water ; so that the castle 

 may be four centuries old, and yet there may have been a gradual rise of the land at 

 that point to the amount of more than two feet in a century. 



Not being able to visit Sundsvall, 1 applied by letter to Mr. James Dickson, resi- 

 dent at that port, who at my request put a series of questions, which 1 had drawn up, 

 to the most experienced pilots and fishermen on their return in November last from 

 their fishing-stations in the Gulf of Bothnia. In their answers they stated : 



1st, That they could not conceive the possibility of the land rising, but were of 

 opinion that the sea had been sinking gradually in the Gulf of Bothnia, the fall du- 

 ring the last thirty years amounting to two feet, or thereabouts : 



2ndly, They had never seen any of the marks cut in the rocks in 1820 ; but from 

 other appearances they inferred that the fall of the waters in the last fourteen years, 

 in the neighbourhood both of Sundsvall and Hernosand, was from six to eight inches : 



Srdly, They had found it necessary in their own time, in consequence of the re- 

 tiring and shallowing of the waters, to remove their stations or fishing-posts nearer 

 to the sea : 



4thly, They could point out examples of large blocks of rock which had been 

 moved and even conveyed from one place to another by ice, both on the shores of the 

 islands of the Gulf of Bothnia and on those of the main land. 



I shall now pass over from the shores of the Baltic to the opposite coast of Sweden 

 between Uddevalla and Gothenburg, a district from 250 to 300 miles south-west of 

 that before described, and about three degrees of latitude farther south. The deposits 

 containing recent shells at Uddevalla, raised in some spots to the height of more than 

 two hundred English feet above the sea, have long been celebrated ; as also the dis- 

 covery, made by M. Alexandre Brongniart^ of barnacles attached to elevated rocks 

 of gneiss on the spots where they must have grown. I was desirous of seeing this 

 phenomenon, as it appeared to me that it might throw some light on the time which 

 has elapsed since the shelly beds were raised from the sea ; for if the Balani had been 

 exposed in the open air ever since the emergence of the rocks to which they were 

 fixed, it could hardly be supposed that the time had been indefinitely great, since in 

 that case the shells must have been decomposed. The fact recorded by M. Brongniart 

 was, I believe, observed at Capellbacken, immediately south of Uddevalla, where there 

 is a narrow valley in the gneiss, the bottom of which is filled up with a great deposit 

 of shells, sand, and clay, which rise, according to Hisinger, at their greatest eleva- 



* Se? Von Hoff, Part I. p. 438. 



